Too Early to Rejoice? Govt says Covid-19 Cases ‘plateauing’ in 13 States, Experts disagree
While the states have reported a marginal decline in new infections, experts argue that a trend cannot be established based on 48-72 hours of data.
In a seemingly positive development, the Health Ministry has released a list of 13 states including Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Telangana, and Uttarakhand which are reportedly showing early signs of plateauing/ decline in new Covid-19 cases, based on their recent case data.
A positive trend has also been observed in Covid-19 recoveries. On May 2, the recovery rate was at 78% and on May 3 it climbed up to almost 82%.
“There is a relative signal of movement towards positive direction if the trajectory of daily cases and deaths is analyzed. On May 1 roughly about 400,000 new Covid-19 cases were reported from across the country, on May 2 it came down to 392,000 cases, and in past 24 hours (Sunday), we found 367,000 cases, which shows there’s a reduction in daily new cases to some extent cases,” said Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Union Health Ministry.
“It is important to have continued efforts of containment at district and state level so that we can preserve these gains and reduce cases further”, added Agarwal, noting that these are very early signs.
However, the margin of the decline in cases is almost negligible in some cases, which is why experts suggest it could merely be an aberration. For instance, in Madhya Pradesh, the daily rise had dipped from a big high of 13,000 to 12,800. Similarly, Maharashtra has dipped from 65,000 to 62,000 and Delhi from 25,200 to 24,000. Chhattisgarh which used to report 15,500 daily new cases, is now reporting around 14,900.
“You cannot establish a trend by looking at 48-72 hours data. It should at least sustain for a few weeks before something can be declared concretely,” said a Senior Public Health Expert.
The numbers also do not account for the significant dip in the number of tests conducted across the three days – around 400,000, and a corresponding increase in the positivity rate.
While this does mark a minimal decline in new infections after India hit the grim milestone of over 4 lakh new cases, it can in no way be a reason to rejoice since the overall case positivity rate is still quite high and based on state-wise data, would continue to be so for some time.
Government data has revealed that the cases have begun to rise or are continuing to rise in states including Andaman and Nicobar, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, Chandigarh, Haryana, Karnataka Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir as well as the northeastern states, including Sikkim.
22% of the states show a sample positivity of over 15%, which continues to be a cause for concern. No states have a sample positivity between 5-15%, while only five states have a figure below five%.
Twelve states have over 1 lakh active COVID cases, 7 states have 50k to 1 lakh cases, while 17 states have less than 50,000.
