GURUGRAM: The city recorded 171 new Covid cases on Saturday compared to 150 on Friday. However, the test positivity rate was 5.5%, marginally lower than 5.8% on Friday. The number of active cases is now 671, up from 589 on the previous day.
Since April 1, the city has added 1,343 Covid cases in only 16 days. Last month, the city saw 1,959 cases. While the number of hospitalisations has not gone up, doctors said that the number of patients arriving at the OPDs is increasing. Three patients are currently hospitalized, and the rest are in home isolation.
“The hospitalisation has not gone up, but the number of patients in the OPDs has increased. The cases started increasing after the government removed the mandate for masks. I think it was a premature decision. The number of cases in Europe was going up, and a new variant XE was also reported when the restrictions were lifted,” said Dr Arunesh Kumar, head of the department and senior consultant, pulmonology, Paras Hospitals, Gurgaon.
Asked about the symptoms in the patients, Dr Sushila Kataria, senior director (internal medicine), Medanta, said, “I have not seen much lung involvement. A few patients are complaining of coughs, and we recommended CT scans, which turned out to be normal. Diarrhoea is what we are seeing now in adult patients and children. We also did a few tests to separate Omicron and non-Omicron cases and found that most cases are Omicron-related. The symptoms last for 72 hours and then begin to subside.”
The doctors, however, said that getting back to masks and following Covid protocols is essential to check the number of cases. “Those who are eligible for booster dose should take that, and children eligible for vaccination should get vaccinated soon so that we can have holistic immunity. Since the number of cases reported of late was less, we had stopped the Covid tests of patients before surgeries and hospital admissions. So, maybe many asymptomatic cases were not picked up. However, testing will now be resumed for high-risk patients,” added Kataria.
Gurgaon inoculated 6,605 people on Saturday, of whom 3,224 received booster doses; 1,387 were children aged between 12 and 14 years and 348 in the age group of 15 to 17.
The health department said that it has ramped up testing. “We will ensure that we test over 3,000 people every day,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer, Gurgaon. The private and government health labs conducted 3,097 tests in the last 24 hours.
