CHANDIGARH:
Punjab is witnessing encouraging signs with the first monthly fall in the number of
fresh Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the
pandemic in March. After a consistent deluge for months, there has been a
steady fall in fresh cases and deaths since mid-September. As many as 18,507 cases were reported in October while 58,378 had surfaced in September.
The period recorded over 68% fall in number of cases and over 60% fall in deaths. The growth rate during the period varied between 1% and 0.3% in October against the national average of 1% to 0.8%, which in September had touched 6%.
From October 3 to 10, 5,998 cases were reported while the number of new cases fell to 3,837 in the subsequent week. Following a similar trajectory, the count dipped further to 3,486 during October 17-24 and to 3,018 in the last week of the last month.
Urbanised populated districts continued to share the bulk of cases, with Jalandhar contributing 424 in the last week, followed by 354 in Mohali, 325 in Ludhiana, 199 in Amritsar and 195 in Patiala.
The steady decline in the number of cases has also led to a drop in R-value, which refers to the reproduction number at which
Covid-19 or any other infection spreads. The rate in Punjab has come down from 0.92 recorded between September 6 and 25 to 0.70+/-0.01.
High Fatality Rate
The state’s fatality rate continues to be highest in the country.
With 4,203 people losing their lives to the virus of the 133,658 infected, the case fatality rate stands at 3.1% against the national average of 1.5%. Maharashtra has the second highest fatality rate of 2.6%, followed by Gujarat 2.2% and Delhi 1.7%.
The Punjab health authorities are hopeful of the fatality rate coming down as there has been a slide in the number of patients getting critical.