Over 4k cases again, official data shows 119 deaths in April

Gurgaon: A day after its daily Covid-19 infection count went past the 5,000 mark for the first time and its daily positivity rate touched a new peak of 41%, there was a dip in both. But the numbers remained high for a city struggling to contain the second wave of the pandemic with all its hospitals full, critical patients not finding beds and hospitals going through an oxygen crisis almost every day.
On Friday, 4,435 fresh cases were reported, taking the overall caseload to 1,22,934. The daily positivity rate stood at 34%. The city recorded in excess of 3,000 cases on seven days in April, which has been the most brutal month of the pandemic with most deaths (119, of which 14 were reported on Friday) and nearly 50% of the overall cases (59,934). The case doubling rate, which was 100 days at the beginning of the month, has come down to just 29. April ended with the recovery rate at 69%, a very different scenario from April 1 when it was 98%.
There are now 36,693 active cases, about 30% of the overall infection count. A total of 33,998 patients are in home isolation and 2,467 are in hospitals (severe cases) while 228 are in Covid care centres (mild cases). The health department said 1,621 patients recovered on Friday, taking the total number of recoveries to 85,765.
But for Covid patients, getting admission to hospitals remained a huge challenge. According to government data, no ICU or ventilator bed was available as of 8pm on Friday.
“We have intensified testing and we are isolating people in large outbreak regions (LOR) with symptoms of influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory infections,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, Gurgaon. He added, “We are distributing immunity boosters and other medications in LOR.”
In the past 24 hours, the health department collected 12,703 samples for antigen and RT-PCR tests.