The high number of people recovering from the viral infection pushed the recovery rate to 72%, a seven percentage point jump from last week's recovery rate. (Representational)In what could be perceived as a positive turnaround in the Covid situation in Uttar Pradesh, for the first time since the outbreak of the disease in the first week of March the state has recorded more number of people recovering than those testing positive in a week.
The week ending Sunday (August 23) recorded 33,363 new cases in the last seven days vis-a-vis 35,181 people recovering in the same period. Till now 1,35,613 people have recovered.
The high number of people recovering from the viral infection pushed the recovery rate to 72%, a seven percentage point jump from last week’s recovery rate.
The increase in patient recovery also brought down the number of active patients in the state from 51,537 (last Sunday) to 49,242 – a drop of 2,295 in the last seven days.
The average weekly growth in Covid cases dropped further to 3.08% from last week’s 3.70%, thereby increasing the doubling rate to 23 days. The cumulative count of people testing positive for coronavirus in the state is now at 1,87,781.
Additional Chief Secretary (Medical & Health) Amit Mohan Prasad said the test-positivity rate in the state is among the lowest in the country and has been below 5% in August.
However, the concern remains the deaths linked to Covid. As many as 477 people died of the infection in the last seven days — nearly 100 more from last week’s count. As many as 59 people died in the last 24 hours, pushing the state’s fatality count to 2,926, according to the health department’s Sunday bulletin.
While the case-fatality rate remains low at 1.56%, the steady increase in the number of deaths has been an area of concern for the health officials. Kanpur Nagar has recorded maximum deaths 354 followed by Capital Lucknow 286, Varanasi 145, Meerut 128, Prayagraj 126, Agra 105, Gorakhpur and Bareilly 103 each.
While there was no dramatic change in the Covid situation in the districts, Lucknow (712 cases in last 24 hours) and Kanpur Nagar (320 cases in last 24 hours) stay as the top two worst-affected districts with 6805 and 3652 active cases, respectively.
However, there has been a slight dip in the number of cases in the Capital last week —Lucknow added 4,373 new cases in the last seven days, nearly 340 fewer than the previous week.
A total of eight districts – Lucknow, Kanpur Nagar, Gorakhpur, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Bareilly, Aligarh and Ghaziabad have more than 1,000 active cases. Among these, the top five districts are Lucknow with 6,805 active cases, Kanpur Nagar with 3,652, Gorakhpur with 2,588, Prayagraj with 2,411 and Varanasi with 1,807 active cases.
Meanwhile, the two west UP districts of Hapur and Baghpat reported a drop in active cases to 87 and 94, respectively. Notably, there are three more districts – Mahoba, Hathras and Hamirpur – that have less than 100 active cases.
Meanwhile, 1,30,445 samples were tested on Saturday – the highest in one day — taking the total test count to 45,51,619.