Faridabad cases surge, growing faster than Gurugram

GURUGRAM: Having added more than 3,000 cases in a month, Faridabad’s share in the Haryana Covid-19 count is growing and chipping away at that of Gurugram. It has been adding more cases than Gurugram every day over the past week and its recovery rate, while going up, is not as high as that of Gurugram.
At the beginning of the month, Faridabad had just 416 cases, making up 17.6% of Haryana’s 2,356 cases. By mid-June, that went up a notch — to 18.2% of Haryana’s 7,722 cases. But in just the past two weeks, it added 2,050 cases, its case share going to 21.8% by June 22 and 24.9% by Sunday. Its case growth rate had been uneven but shot up over the past week — from 7.3% in the first week, it dipped to 5.5% in the second, rose a little to 5.9% in the third and has surged to 7.79% now. It added 1,220 cases over the past week.
Gurugram’s case share in the state, meanwhile, has been dipping — as of Sunday, at 37.3%, it is lower than it was on June 1 (38.3%). Over the next week, it had shot up to 44.6% and 45% by the next (June 15). It dipped till June 22 (40.9%) and further over the following week till Sunday. Its case growth rate has been dipping sharply — the growth rate tends to fall as the base figure of the number of cases rises. At the end of the first week of June, its case growth rate had been 8.3%. By the next week, it fell to 5.39%, then 3.2% over the next and stands at 2% now. Over the past week, Faridabad has consistently been adding more cases every day than Gurugram has.
The state health bulletin stated that Faridabad had added 131 cases on Sunday to reach 3,456 cases of which 1,554 were active. Later in the evening, however, the district bulletin had put the number of active cases at 1,302 after 225 recoveries. The change did not reflect in the state bulletin at the time of filing this report. Gurugram added 88 cases on Sunday and has 5,158 cases now, of which 1,326 cases are active, very close to that of Faridabad.
The Faridabad health department said the surge in Covid-19 cases was because more people were coming forward for testing — 2,230 samples were sent for testing over the past week alone. And with 50% of the samples being sent to private labs, the results are back faster.
“People are being careful and are getting themselves tested even if mild symptoms appear, which is good. So we are getting more cases every day. Besides, with things opening up, people are moving around more,” said Dr Ram Bhagat, deputy chief medical officer of Faridabad.
The testing numbers bear that out — between March and May 31, Faridabad had tested 12,318 samples. In June alone, it has tested 10,248 so far. The recovery rate, while increasing by the week — from 38% in the first week of June to 29% in the second, 31% in the third and 43% in the fourth — is still lower than that of Gurugram.
In fact, Gurugram had more recoveries (1,121) than new cases (642) on Sunday. Since June 1, Gurugram added 4,380 of its 5,154 Covid-19 cases reported so far.
As of Sunday, 1,327 of Gurugram’s 5,154 cases are active. Since the second week of June, the recovery rate of Gurugram has been rising. In the first week, the recovery rate of Gurugram was a low 13.7%. The Covid-19 surge had just begun in Gurugram. By the end of the second week, that rose to 60.78% and to 71.1% by third week and it further rose to 72.7% in the fourth week of June.