Gurgaon: The surge in
Covid-19 cases continued on Monday, with the city witnessing 1,132 new cases in the last 24 hours – the highest since the pandemic began – taking the overall tally to 71,273.
This was the second straight day that Gurgaon recorded more than 1,000 fresh cases. As many as 1,084 people had tested positive on Sunday.
After declining since December, cases started increasing in February-end. Since March 18, the city has been recording more than 100 cases daily, which has now gone up to 1,000. There have been nine deaths in the same period.
Meanwhile, there has been a threefold rise in active cases this month. On April 1, Gurgaon had 1,943 active cases, which rose to 6,177 on Monday. The active numbers had shown a downward trend from January 18 till March 10, after which they have been slowly rising again. The weekly positivity rate stands at 10%.
“Due to the rising cases, we are planning to increase testing by 20%. We have already increased
antigen testing by more than 30% in the last 12 days. We are carrying out more than 8,500 tests daily,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, Gurgaon.
Dr Yadav welcomed the Haryana government’s move to impose a curfew from 9am to 5am. “This move will help curtail the Covid spread but it’s not a permanent solution. People need to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour,” he added.
The health department said 504 patients recovered on Monday, bringing the total number of recoveries to 64,727. The recovery rate stands at 91.5%. No deaths were reported. So far, 369 people in the city have died of Covid, of whom 284 had comorbidities. Currently, the fatality rate stands at 0.5%.
As of Monday, 5,889 Covid patients were in home isolation. As many as 31 people were sent to institutional quarantine facilities on Monday. So far, 10,25,748 people have been put under surveillance in the city. In the past 24 hours, the health authorities collected 8,545 samples for antigen and
RT-PCR tests.