UP Govt Claims Covid Curve ‘flattening’: Positivity rate falls to 7% from high of 17%

While the influx of Covid-19 cases has been declining for the past few days, the test-positivity rate has stayed below 10 per cent in Uttar Pradesh for the fourth consecutive days and came down to nearly 7 per cent on Thursday — a fall of nearly 10 percentage point from the high of 16.84 per cent on April 24.

The test positivity rate, which is the number of positive cases against the total tests done, reflects the infection rate – how fast the virus is spreading. A fortnight ago, when the cases had shown a slight dip for a few days, the test-positivity rate had remained high as there was a corresponding drop in the number of tests.

This time, however, there has been no corresponding decline in testing, and as a result, the decline in new cases has led to a drop in the infection rate. In fact, on Thursday, the government said that 2.53 lakh samples were tested on Wednesday, while the number of new cases reported in the last 24 hours dropped to 17,775.

The number of fatalities, however, remains a matter of concern. In the past 24 hours, at least 281 Covid related deaths were reported. While 35 patients died in Lucknow, 16 deaths have been reported in Kanpur Nagar and 15 in Meerut, according to the state Health Department’s bulletin.

“With the state managing to flatten the curve and limiting the transmission of the deadly virus, the Covid-19 situation in Uttar Pradesh has witnessed a significant improvement as the number of active cases has drastically been reduced by nearly 1.06 lakh in the last 12 days with a swift recovery of Covid patients even in home isolation. The number of active Covid cases in the state has now dropped to nearly 2.04 lakh. With the aggressive approach against Covid as part of the ‘test, trace and treat’ strategy, the state has conducted more than 43 million Covid tests,” a statement issued by the state Information Department said.

It added that under this strategy the state is conducting tests on a “war footing” even in the remotest rural areas of the state.

According to the weekly report on the campaign, the Covid test teams have visited around 32 million houses in different blocks of districts within a week — between May 5 and 12 — against the targeted 3,30,69,010 houses.

Similarly, the teams conducted a total of 2,57,845 tests in remote blocks of the districts. The state government has also claimed to have distributed medicine kits to 3,74,685 Covid patients so far.

The NITI Aayog, meanwhile, appreciated the UP “model for oxygen transport & tracking”, under which the state has established oxygen hubs and developed a dashboard ‘OxyTracker’, through which tankers can be tracked in real-time. The Aayog said that as a result around 1000 MT of oxygen was being lifted by the state instead of 250 MT before.

“House-to-house visits undertaken in a mammoth drive in over 90,000 villages of UP to identify and isolate Covid-positive citizens and trace contacts should serve as a model for other states to replicate. Such proactive test-trace-treat model is a highly effective way of tackling the surge,” it added.