Nagpur, May 21 :Nagpur reported 1,000 new Covid-19 cases and 33 casualties in the last 24 hours, district health officials said.
The deaths due to the infection also have come down to 8 in the urban areas and 12 in rural areas of the city Today.
Out of the total of 33 deaths, 13 reported from outside Nagpur as the district being an important centre of Central India, it gets patients from adjoining districts and states like Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh(MP).
This shows that coronavirus affected persons have shifted to rural areas after the urban populace and health service providers have heaved a sigh of relief.
The number of corona positive cases has gone down considerably during the last two weeks in Nagpur city. Similar is the situation in some districts in Nagpur Division.
The recovery rate has gone up to 94.50 per cent, which had gone down to around 70 per cent 2 months back.
The trend of recession in positivity rate in an urban area might have relieved the urban health providers and people of Nagpur.
However, the increasing number of patients from rural areas needs immediate attention.
The health facilities in rural areas are weaker as far as availability of beds, oxygen, Intensive Care Units and Ventilator are concerned.
Transportation of patients from rural to urban health centres for timely treatment could pose serious problems.
Moreover, this transportation can adversely affect the recovery phase of the city as the patients from rural areas will be accompanied by others.
The stress on hospitals and pathological laboratories has eased during the last two weeks.
Today 1000 positive cases were detected from 19,109 tests conducted, which include 14,185 for urban people and 4,924 for those from the rural area. The difference in conducted tests also throws light on the lack of facilities for testing and lack of attention to the growing number of patients in rural areas of Nagpur.
The issues of lack of awareness in rural areas and neglecting Covid-19 protocol by people in villages, also need careful scrutiny.
Testing in rural areas using mobile testing units can be increased for tracing and treating positive cases. The chain of the virus can be broken only through timely steps by the health machinery.
The cumulative deaths have been reported at 8718, of which 5,179 are from Nagpur city and 2,232 from Nagpur rural and 1307 out of Nagpur district.
The cumulative positive cases are 4,68,931 and cumulative recovery at 4,43,159.
Although the present recovery rate has been reported to be 94.50 per cent, a total of active cases are 17,054.
Much of that, the local civic body, Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has taken an important step to identify asymptomatic super spreaders through its mobile units and isolate them immediately which is an important step towards controlling further transmission of the infection of the virus.(UNI)