The number of Corona cases in India has risen 28-fold in the past 15 days but if the numbers are to be believed it is not as high as they went in the second wave of the pandemic last year. The National capital’s numbers are an indicator that the hospitalization is far less than the numbers recorded in April 2021. According to a senior official, the daily case count in April in Delhi was 20,000 but the hospitalization as of now is only one-fourth or one-fifth of that number.
The ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) has revised its testing norms to assist in the early detection of symptomatic cases of the virus. The ICMR has recommended that people who are asymptomatic in community settings, people who have taken interstate domestic traveling, and contacts with patients unless they have been identified as high-risk based on their age or comorbidities do not require Covid testing. This is only general advice benign given to people, it can be modified according to the state rules and health authorities.
The number of cases is expected to cross the four lakh mark this time, it had hit the peak of 4.14 lakh cases in May last year but the difference this time is that the government is far more prepared with the increased number of hospital beds and oxygen supply as well. The infections have been spreading rapidly all over the nation. The positivity rate in the districts reporting a weekly case of more than 5 percent has increased from 21 percent at the end of December to 202 in the last week, registering a ten-fold increase in the last two weeks.
The cities of concern as of now are Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Noida. At least 40 districts in 13 states including Punjab, Jharkhand, Haryana, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh where the positivity rate of cases is more than five percent and have reported a ten-fold increase in the rate.
The ICMR has also advised the patients who have been discharged from a Covid facility do not have to be tested as per the policy. The ICMR has recommended testing of these four categories in a community setting, these are individuals undertaking international travel, international travelers arriving in India, symptomatic people, and the at-risk contacts of lab-confirmed cases. People who have at least one of these six symptoms - fever, cough, sore throat, loss of taste, loss of smell, breathlessness, or other respiratory symptoms should also get tested.
The Health Ministry has reported that Omicron has a growth advantage over the Delta variant. The doubling time is two to three days in Omicron and the world is witnessing a rapid increase in the number of Corona cases. Although the variant is less severe than all the other variants but the WHO has stated that the virus should not be categorized as ‘mild’.