Delhi health minister attributes spike in Covid-19 cases to festive season, change in contact tracing strategy

KEY STORY

• A day after Delhi recorded the highest ever single-day spike in infections with 5,673 Covid-19 cases, health minister Satyendar Jain attributed it to the festive season and a change in the administration’s contact tracing strategy.

• Talking to reporters on Thursday, Jain assured that Delhi is well-prepared for another surge in Covid-19 cases in the winter months.

• An expert committee headed by NITI Ayog member VK Paul has said the number of cases in Delhi could go up to 15,000 a day during the winter months.

Jain said the number is unlikely to touch the 15,000-mark.

“We have changed our strategy by strengthening our contact tracing system now. We are seeing a surge in daily Covid-19 cases not only because more people are coming out owing to the festivities, but also because of this change in strategy.”

• Explaining the latest strategy, Jain said until last week, the government used to test contacts of Covid-19 positive persons only if they showed symptoms.

“But it was realised that contact tracing per Covid-19 case was not being done properly. Hence, now directions have been issued to test every person who came in close contact with the Covid-19 positive case even if they are not showing symptoms. In fact, we are also trying to get many of them tested for a second time after four days or a week. This is why the positivity rate is also increasing. So, now we are trying to test 5-6 contacts per Covid case to break the cycle of infection.”

• In its response to a Right to Information (RTI) application filed by this reporter, the Delhi government’s state surveillance unit said that between March, when the first Covid-19 case was detected in the city, and September, 30, 555,662 contacts of Covid-19 cases were tracked. Till September 30, Delhi had a cumulative of 282,752 Covid-19 cases, as per the health bulletin of October 1.

• This means on average only around 2 people per Covid-19 case in Delhi were traced till September 30. Community surveillance or contact tracing is one of the mainstays of the government’s strategy to fight Covid-19 transmission in the country.

• The Delhi government’s response to the RTI application dated October 14 also said that of the 555,662 contacts of Covid-19 cases that were traced till September 30, as many as 33,882 contacts ultimately had tested positive.

• The health minister appealed to the people to take full caution in the coming festival days which include following social distancing norms and wearing masks.

• On hospital arrangements made by the government for a surge in cases, Jain said the city administration is “well-prepared” for the coming days and added that as of date more than 10,000 beds are vacant in the city hospitals for Covid patients.

• On Wednesday, 5,673 new cases of the viral infection were reported. The positivity rate – the proportion of samples that returned positive among those tested – also was over 9%. This happened for the first time since the first week of September when Delhi was conducting only about 20,000 tests a day.

• The number of cases in the city started increasing again in October as the government scaled up the more reliable RT-PCR tests. On Wednesday, over 17,000 RT-PCR tests were conducted in the city for the first time.