NEW DELHI: While the capital is witnessing a surge of Covid-19 cases for the last two weeks, the rise is significantly higher in upscale localities at present going by the number of active Covid cases.
The number of active cases hugely varies across the 11 revenue districts of the capital with four districts having more than 700 cases each, while five districts have less than 350 active cases each. The highest number of active cases at present is in the south district, where the number was 902 till Friday, according to the data available with TOI . Sources said the number is inching towards the 1,000-mark now.
While the district with second-highest number of active cases is north west, with the figure being 844, the next two districts in the top four category are both situated close to the south district – south east and south west. In fact, when combined, the active cases in south, south east and south west districts account for 43% of all active cases in Delhi, out of the 11 districts.
“Now we are mainly getting more Covid-19 cases from the upscale residential areas such as Safdarjung Enclave, Sainik Farms, Pushpanjali, Malviya Nagar, Pushp Vihar, etc,” a south district official said on condition of anonymity, adding that testing and tracing has gone up hugely to contain the spread.
“There are 727 active cases in the south east district and 78.3% of the cases are inside containment zones. The high case load now is in upscale areas such as Greater Kailash-II, Chittaranjan Park, Lajpat Nagar, Jungpura etc.,” said Vishwendra, district magistrate (south east). “All these cases are family cases and not like clusters. There are usually two to three cases and we are just containing the houses and increasing surveillance. We are now containing every case,” he said.
Surveillance, however, has been increased ‘tremendously’ and healthcare workers are going to each house, he said. “We are trying to effectively contain the active cases,” he said.
“The uptick is primarily due to lack of Covid appropriate behaviour and that is why, we have increased challans, which have gone up 10 times from 37 to 373,” he said, adding that awareness campaigns are being carried out extensively, including by the enforcement teams.
He, however, said that the increase is not due to increase in testing only as the district has been continuously carrying out 4,200 RT-PCRT tests every day, apart from around 2,000 rapid antigen tests.
Officials said that apart from increased testing and tracing, district authorities are particularly focusing on clusters from where cases are being reported regularly and also the more than 120 municipal wards that had revealed less than 50% sero prevalence in the fifth serological survey conducted in January this year.