HYDERABAD: In a setback to Telangana’s Covid battle, 11 districts have started witnessing a spike in new cases, fuelling concerns over whether this was the result of the festivities around 10 days ago. The effect was most notably seen in Bhadradri-Kothagudem district where a spike of 31 per cent has been recorded. In the last seven days, 620 cases were detected here, with 118 cases on Tuesday alone.
A similar situation is prevailing in Nalgonda district as well, which has reported 566 cases in the last seven days, with 101 on Tuesday alone. These two districts are faring worse than those districts with larger populations. When Express spoke to a few officials concerned, they said that one of the reasons behind this could be because of the increased testing across 40 UPHC clinics, where 2,500 tests are being conducted daily. “Initially our positivity rate was nearly 37%. However, the district’s positivity rate is only seven per cent now. The spike is due to people becoming lax in their attitude with the pandemic,” said Dr Bhaskar Naik, the DMHO of Kothagudem district.
Though the public’s laxity is a factor in Kothagudem, the main issue is that majority of the tests being done are RATs, which successfully detect Covid primarily in symptomatic cases. For RT-PCR, the district’s capacity is 100 tests daily, allowing asymptomatic cases to slip from the radar. The district has also had nearly 160 healthcare workers being infected across the last eight months, which could also be another reason for the potential clusters. For Nalgonda, officials say that the possible spike could be due to the closure of testing centres on several days across last week. An analysis by Center for Covid Monitoring by ASCI and FTCCI found that week on week, Jagtial, Mancherial and Nirmal districts saw cases grow by 54, 43 and 48 percentages respectively.