State detects 3.5 Covid-19 positive cases per 100 tests in 10 days
RANCHI: Jharkhand’s 10-day average Covid positivity rate-l, the number of cases reported among the total samples tested, stood at 3.5%, meaning thereby that of the 100 samples tested during this period, average 3.5 people were found infected.
Beginning July 1, the state has been witnessing steep surge in Covid-19 cases as over 29% of the total 3518 cases came between July 1-10. However, the disease’s positivity rate also increased in this period indicating the state’s growing infection burden.
In the last 10 days, the state had reported 1028 confirmed cases out of 29391 samples tested. This pointed out that average 3.5 positive cases were detected out of the 100 samples tested.
In the preceding 10-day period between June 21-30, the average positivity rate was 2% indicating that to every 100 samples tested during this period, two people were found infected. The period reported 466 cases out of 22174 samples tested.
Experts, however, said high positivity rate indicated that the state had ramped up testing and it would have less “missing cases”.
They said, “The high positivity rate also indicates the increase in pandemic’s spread.”
Jharkhand is witnessing an unabated increase in its Covid cases. It took 80 days for the state to reach 2000 cases, but in just 20 days it added another 1500 cases.
The last 10 days saw an average daily growth of over 100 cases. In last three days, that is, on July 8, 9 and 10, the state reported 116, 134 and 250 cases respectively.
“The state has improved its testing mechanism as it is testing those who are more likely to test positive as they fall in high risk category,” said Dr AK Singh, Indian medical association (IMA) state president.
“Jharkhand is detecting about 100 new cases each day. This means the infection is spreading in the community,” he added.
The state ramped up its testing capacity to nearly 3000 samples per day. The test is now widely available across state and those who had no access to tests before are also getting tested. This apart, testing norms have been relaxed and people willing to get tested, need not to produce a doctor’s prescription.
However, increased sampling has again created a backlog of over 5000 untested samples in government owned laboratories.