In fact, January’s tally of 69,107 cases came close to figures of May 2021 when 69,265 infections were recorded when the graph nosedived during the second wave.
Last year, April recorded over 1.88lakh cases which remains the district’s highest single-month tally, followed by 79,680 in March and 69,265 in May. The covid cases of January this year are about 37% of second wave peak in April last year.
Last month, 136 deaths were reported, which is just over 5% of those reported in April when over 2,300 had succumbed to the virus. However, the district and civic administrations have expressed concern as Omicron was assumed to be mild variant and a large number of people are vaccinated.
A major difference that possibly led to less reporting of cases despite higher transmissibility rate of the Omicron variant was drastic revision in testing policy now as compared to the delta wave.
As citizens, vaccinated and unvaccinated, largely suffered mild illness such as fever, cold and cough, not many preferred to take Covid test while doctors too didn’t insist on it. Many fully and partially jabbed person’s tested positive but took less than five days to recover, as per doctors.
The district couldn’t go past the 14,000 daily testing mark as Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) did away with contact tracing and tests for asymptomatic close contacts. During March, April and May last year, the district had touched nearly 30,000 daily tests.
A strong indicator of the wave waning is the drop in active cases in the last one week. The active cases are now down to around 20,000 from 29,918 on January 26. The district’s third wave is likely to have peaked between January 22 and Jan 26, as per experts.
Another interesting fact observed during the Omicron wave was the fall in admission percentage as the cases grew. On January 1, 54 persons were admitted to institutional quarantine centers and hospitals when there were 321 active cases. This came to around 16%.
On January 26, when the district had the highest active cases in the third wave, the admission rate fell to just over 1% though in terms of number it was higher. Now, 2.78% of patients are admitted but many of the 569 patients are in institutional quarantine.
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