Covid-19: 65% of new cases recorded in Gurugram in last 10 days are contacts or kin

GURUGRAM: In the last 10 days, Gurugram has added 2,068 new Covid-19 cases, out of which 65% (1,344) are contacts or are family members of people who are already infected, says data released by the health department.
A fresh surge in cases is being witnessed in Gurugram from August 21. Prior to this, the city was reporting less than 100 cases per day. This figure touched 200 on September 3, and has not below that mark since. In the last one week, the number of tests done in the city has also grown 80%.

“We are focusing on increasing the number of tests from 3,000 to 4,000 in the coming days. At present, we will try to maintain 3,000 daily tests in the city. The numbers are increasing as people are not maintaining social distancing or following the norms. We have witnessed that, on an average, more than 70% of our daily positive cases in the recent weeks are close contacts and family members of Covid patients,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, Gurugram.
As more than 80% of Gurugram’s cases are asymptomatic and thus are allowed to stay under home isolation, they are passing on the infection to members of their family by not isolating themselves properly, said Yadav.
The number of daily active cases, which was less than 700 in August, has climbed to 1,951 on Thursday, posing concerns. Gurugram reported more than 1,500 active cases on an average every day in June. This figure started to dip in July and hovered below 1,000 cases, further declining in August. However, this month the city is, once again, witnessing a surge in active cases after almost a gap of two months and this time, they are concentrated in the families of patients.
The city on Thursday reported 309 fresh infections. This is the first time in two months that the city has more than 300 cases in a day. The city’s Covid-19 tally stands at 14,295 cases. The health department said 216 people recovered from Covid-19 on Thursday, bringing the total number of recoveries to 12,204. No one succumbed to the infection in the last 24 hours, officials said. Till date, 140 people have died of Covid-19 in the city of whom 98 had comorbidities.
On Thursday, 18 people were put under government quarantine. The district has a total of 1,951 active cases, of which 1,740 are in home isolation. The health authorities were able to collect 3,188 samples in the past 24 hours for antigen and RT-PCR tests.
So far, 1,99,377 people have been put under surveillance in the district. Till date, the health department has sent 1,92,543 samples for testing, of which 1,75,060 turned out to be negative, while the results of 1,511 are awaited.
At present, there are a total of 518 Covid-19 patients who are admitted in 46 different hospitals across the city out of 169 patients are from Gurugram, 70 are from other parts of Haryana, 42 from Delhi and 132 are from Uttar Pradesh, and remaining 105 from other states. Out of them, 114 are in ICUs and 39 on ventilator support. Of the total 4,758 beds, including 679 ICU beds and 327 with ventilators in the 46 hospitals, 1,511 are available for Covid patients.