COURTESY HT OCT 1

Covid spread slows in densely populated areas, says admin
The localities, which were Covid hots pots a month ago, come under four different primary health care blocks, namely Patel Nagar, Badshahpur Wazirabad and Chanderlok

Health officials attributed this improvement to ‘active’ surveillance in containment zones. HT FILE
Prayag Arora-Desai

prayag.desai@htlive.com

Gurugram : The district health department has observed a slowdown in the spread of Covid-19 among densely populated localities that were, until a month ago, hotspots for the disease. These areas come under four different primary health care blocks, namely Patel Nagar, Badshahpur, Wazirabad and Chanderlok. Of them, Patel Nagar has been denotified as a containment zone after no new positive cases were reported from the area in two weeks.

Health officials attributed this improvement to “active” surveillance in containment zones, as opposed to “passive” surveillance deployed in other parts of the district.

Gurugram chief medical officer Dr Virender Yadav said that passive surveillance includes testing people based on symptoms and contact history at designated surveillance sites, such as primary health centres (PHCs) and private labs, while active surveillance in containment zones involves aggressively testing as many people as possible, irrespective of the presence of symptoms.

Revised containment zone orders issued on September 29 show a significant drop in the number of ‘sealed areas’ in these localities, where public mobility continues to be restricted and only essential activities are permitted even as the lockdown restrictions continue to be lifted elsewhere. For example, Patel Nagar, which had 11 containment zones on September 18, now has none. Similarly, Badshahpur, which had 10 sealed areas, has just one. Wazirabad, which had nine sealed areas on September 18, now has four such zones, while Chanderlok (having 11 containment zones earlier this month) now has just four.

“While containment zones across the district have reduced in number, these areas have shown the most improvement,” said Dr MP Singh, the health department’s nodal officer for containment zone management in Gurugram.

Despite multiple requests, the health department officials did not provide data to show how much of Gurugram’s total caseload has been reported from these areas.

However, Singh said, “At present, we have 66 active cases in Badhshapur, 110 in Patel Nagar, 291 in Chanderlok and 138 in Wazriabad. I do not have the data on earlier cases, but I can say that we had far more active cases in these neighbourhoods about four weeks ago. They are some of the most populated areas in Gurugram. Homes are small, and many parts have informal housing, accelerating the spread.”

However, there are two exceptions to this trend -- Tigra and Khandsa PHC blocks, officials said.

“With all antigen tests concentrated in these areas, we have been able to isolate more positive people in the past three weeks than we were able to do earlier. Rapid response teams have been following up on patients in sealed areas in person, staff capacity,” said Dr Jai Prakash Sharma, district surveillance officer, Gurugram