Covid-19 surge: Test positivity rate touches 8.40 per cent, the first time since Feb last year

NEW DELHI,APR 19 : India is showing a surge in Covid-19 cases, with the test positivity rate (TPR) – a vital marker in assessing the spread of an outbreak – touching 8.40 per cent on April 16.

It is the highest TPR – which indicates the percentage of people who are found to be infected by the virus from those who are being tested – since February 3, 2022, when the third wave driven by Omicron was seeing a surge in Covid-19 cases in India.

Delhi, which according to the latest survey, has shown that 45 per cent of Delhi-NCR households have one or more individuals currently having Covid-19, flu, viral fever symptoms, has 32.25 per cent TPR – the highest in India – reported on April 17.

This is the first time Delhi’s TPR has touched over 30 per cent this year.

The last time Delhi’s TPR was over 30 per cent was on April 22, 2021 – during the second wave – when it went as high as 36.24 and on April 30, 2021, when it touched 32.69 per cent, according to Krishna Prasad N C, a Covid data analyst.

Apart from Delhi, the other states that reported high TPR on April 17 are Goa (15.38%), Rajasthan (15.69%), Haryana (I14.28%), Uttarakhand (11.94%), Karnataka (8.92%), Chandigarh (8.47%) Tamil Nadu (8.66 %), and Himachal Pradesh (7.07%).

Though Kerala is reporting the highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths, it is not publicly sharing the number of Covid-19 tests and TPR.

According to the latest survey conducted in the Delhi-NCR region by LocalCircles, India’s leading community social media platform, 45 per cent of people out of 9,793 said one or more individuals were currently having Covid-19 symptoms.

Our study has shown that most people are not testing in Delhi-NCR. As the test positivity rate is over 32%, every other household presently has one or more members down with Covid, said Sachin Taparia, Founder of LocalCircles.

“In most cases, people are showing up at their workplaces or schools/colleges and using public transport despite having symptoms spreading the infection to others which wasn’t the case during the first three waves,” Taparia told this paper.

According to Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the National Indian Medical Association (IMA) Covid-19 task force, TPR indicates how much spread is happening in the community.

Citing an example, he said in some hospitals in Kerala, which is systematic in conducting Covid-19 tests, in early March, no positive cases were reported, but in mid-March, it went up to 10 per cent. However, by early April, the number spiked to 40-42 per cent. 

 “Earlier, testing was systematic; now it is symptom-based. People are not taking Covid-19 tests as they consider it a waste of time and money and recovering at home, assuming they have Covid-19. This leads to gross underestimation of the amount of infection in the community,” Dr Jayadevan told this paper.

India had reported a gradual rise in Covid-19 cases since mid-March when the XBB.1.16 sub-variant of Omicron was detected in Maharashtra’s Pune.

From 0.28 per cent on March 1, the TPR went up to 1 per cent on March 8 and hovered over 3.19 per cent on March 26.  The TPR touched as high as 8.40 per cent on April 16, said Kerala-based Krishna Prasad.

The number of deaths has also gone up in the country. In March, 101 deaths were recorded, while till April 17, as many as 276 people died due to Covid-19 in the country.

Despite the high TPR being witnessed in the country, health ministry officials have said that Covid-19 will peak in another ten days and will then dip. Officials also noted that hospitalisation and severity had not increased, despite India reporting a 400 per cent increase in cases in the first two weeks of April.

In India, the highest TPR was recorded on January 23, 2022, during the third Covid wave propelled by the Omicron, when it touched 20.75 per cent. It is also the highest TPR reported during all three Covid waves.  On May 3, 2021, the TPR stood at 19.41 during the second wave, Krishna Prasad said.

-PTI