In 2 weeks, Tvm picks up double cumulative cases of five months

Thiruvananthapuram: In 15 days this month, the district health team has picked up twice the cumulative number of cases reported in the past five months, indicating the extent of transmission.
It was a result of increased testing rates as part of surveillance and cluster containment; 42,237 samples were collected by 42 teams in the district, out of which and 4,470 tested positive.
This number of positives is actually double the positive cases in the district reported from March to the middle of July in the district. Till July 18, the district had a cumulative number of 2,220 cases. The daily number of tests in the district consistently crossed 3,000 for seven days during this period. It went below 1,000 once when only 935 samples could be tested and 292 positives were detected that day.
Since July 5 when cluster outbreak was confirmed at Poonthura, the district team had seldom brought down testing to below 2,000 except on a few occasions when testing had to be called off in some coastal clusters due to local protest. While the district is still far from achieving the golden test positivity rate of below 5%, a higher number of tests has been crucial in cluster identification and containment, the officials said. The positivity rate went above 10% on 6 days in two weeks so far. The highest positivity rates of 29% and 31% were recorded on two days in Trivandrum during this period. The officials said that positivity rate spikes higher whenever a new cluster is identified and fresh cases emerge.
Data available with the health department show that the total tests conducted in the district till July 7 since March were 24,568 and in the next 11 days the figure touched 45,936 tests; in less than two weeks, 23,112 were tested. The classic strategy of detecting more cases with more tests was amply demonstrated in the district during this period.
The daily positivity rate had ranged between 5.2% and 14.7% in July. On days where more tests were done, the positivity rate was on the higher side. On July 14, the district did 2,721 tests, and the positivity rate was 10.8% and on July 16, 2,633 tests were done and positivity stood at 14.7%. In addition to over 42,000 tests, the district has managed to do 700 Tru naat and GeneXpert tests.