Thiruvananthapuram: There has been significant drop, not just in active cases but in test positivity rate, ICU occupancy and patient load under categories B and C in the district. The active case percentage as on Friday has been the lowest in the district in the past three months.
The district’s active case percentage on Friday was 10.47 and between August and October the percentage has rarely come down below 30%. It was only in the middle of October that the percentage of active cases came down below 20%. The patient load under category C, which requires critical care, had gone as high as 315 in the second week of October.
From the third week of October, the category C admissions in government and private hospital have begun to drop and as on November 10, the number stood at 216, which is almost equivalent to what the district was handling just before the pre-Onam peak. The patient load under category B, which has been peaking since September, came below 1,000 for the first time in two months.
As on November 10, the patient load under category B including figures from Covid hospitals, private hospitals and secondary-level treatment centres was 918.
The admissions had declined from 1,239 to below 1,000 in two months. The ICU occupancy has also shown a slight drop in November so far. The occupancy in ICU facilities in the district swelled since the first week of September and was inching towards the threshold; however, it was well under control by October and in the first week of November, the occupancy dipped from 189 to 171.
The test positivity rate, which has always been a concern for the district, recorded 10.37% on November 10, which was even lower than the state’s TPR of 10.98%. The TPR of district has swayed between alarming scales — 13-19%. The weekly positivity rate in the district rose from 13.3% in the first week of September to 17.6% by the month end.
A total of 24,411 cases were detected in five weeks, out of 1,55,342 tests which were done in September. Over 1.6 lakh samples were tested in October in first four weeks itself and the weekly positivity rate ranged between 13.7 and 16.8. Right from the first week of October which recorded the highest number of samples tested for a week so far, positivity rate had dropped slightly from 17%. The data show that since the second week of July, Trivandrum’s weekly positivity rate has never gone below 5. From the third week of July when coastal community spread ballooned to a huge crisis for the district, the positivity rate has gone above 10%.
Even with encouraging signs, officials warn that they can hardly let the guard down. “The local body election period is going to be crucial. If we could prevent a post-poll surge we could say that we did well. However chances are too high for another peak in cases. At present, active cases have evidently dropped, however just like during Onam, it could go up any time,” said an official.
Meanwhile, the district recorded 468 Covid-19 positive cases on Saturday.