Covid test positivity rate rises, recovery rate drops in district

Coimbatore: The district has been presenting a worrying trend in Covid battle as test positivity rate keeps rising while recovery rate is dropping, leading to a surge in number of active cases.
Coimbatore continues to report more than 3,000 daily fresh cases. The number of active cases has jumped past the 22,000-mark.
On Sunday, there was yet another urge in caseload as 3,166 more people were declared Covid positive. A look at the statewide Covid data shows that the spike was steepest in Coimbatore over the past few weeks, while other cities like Chennai were showing signs of stabilising. Chennai has been reporting a little more than 6,000 cases for the last few days.
But Coimbatore, which was reporting one-fourth of Chennai’s daily fresh case count in April last week, witnessed a spike in the first week of May when it started reporting one-third of Chennai’s cases. On April 26, Chennai reported 4,250 cases and Coimbatore had 1,056. On May 6, cases in Chennai grew to 6,600 odd cases while Coimbatore doubled its cases to 2,068. Ten days later, Chennai reported lesser number of cases – 6,247. But cases in Coimbatore continued to rise and reported half the number of Chennai’s cases despite the fact that Chennai has a higher and denser population.
On an average, 10,000 people are being tested in Coimbatore and the test positivity rate has been hovering between 25% and 27%, which is considered high. The recovery rate, meanwhile, is falling. On Sunday, 1.151 people were discharged from hospitals and the total active cases stood at 22,181. The number of casualties was 15, according to the state government bulletin.
Adding to the rising numbers are the severe shortage of medical oxygen supplies, which has scaled up the woes of Covid patients. Though government authorities say there are O2 and ventilator beds available in government and private sector, families of Covid patients have to run from pillar to post for a bed.
Out of the 1,124 O2 beds available in government hospitals in the district, only 95 are available. In private hospitals, only 148 out of the 2,695 O2 beds are available.
Neighbouring Tirupur is not far behind as 919 more people were detected with the virus on Sunday.