With fewer +ve cases, pressure on Covid labs eases

Nagpur: After over two months, Covid testing labs are a relieved lot as the cases are on the decline in the district and the number of suspects too has dipped drastically. From a high of nearly 30,000 tests in a day on April 17, the district figures plummeted to over 14,000 a day ago.
Labs have attributed the trend to decline in severity of disease, lockdown effect, and adherence to Covid norms. The labs had been witnessing 50% positivity rate since March, when cases started shooting up. This has now fallen to 20%.
Those manning the labs expect the positivity rate to further come down to 10% in couple of weeks.
On April 12, the NMC had to suspend daily swab collection for RTPCR tests and continue with rapid antigen tests (RATs) at its centres as backlog had piled up at all public labs. Since March-end, RTPCR results of citizens were delayed by 2 to 4 days.
Percentage-wise the drop in positivity rate is proportionate to fall in testing numbers. For the highest ever daily cases of 7,999, the district had conducted 25,300 tests, which was 31% positivity rate, on April 24. Now, when the tests dropped to 14,464 on May 11, the daily cases are at 2,243, which is 15% of the total samples.
A swab collection centre official said mostly symptomatic and high-risk close contacts are coming for testing. “A lot of rush of those needing a negative certificate for different purposes has declined due to lockdown. The positivity rate was around 40% and now it is 16% at our centre, though same amount of samples are collected,” he said.
Dr Meena Mishra, professor and head, department of microbiology, AIIMS Nagpur, said the decline in positive cases has resulted in lesser number of tests. “For every positive person, at least 20 high-risk contacts are traced and tested. When positive cases go down, naturally lesser tests are required. It is a promising sign that Maharashtra’s cases started plateauing early. The state has highest vaccination rate and strict lockdown meant to break the chain are major reasons for the severity of disease going down. From almost 49-51%positivity reported by all testing centres in April, now the % positivity rate in Nagpur has gone down between 18-20,” she said.
“We had been receiving almost 2,200-2,400 samples per day. Now, it has come down to around 1,200-1,400 a day,” she added.