Nagaland COVID-19: Closed spaces are high risk settings for spread

August 30, 2020 104 Views No Comment

• Office and home most prone
• Recovery improves to 75 percent
• Case detection reduced significantly

Morung Express News
Dimapur | August 29

Workplaces and households have emerged to be the two most common environments where COVID-19 infections among “traced contacts” in Nagaland have occurred. The weekly COVID-19 analysis released by the state Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme, Department of Health & Family Welfare, on August 29, further stated that closed space settings are the highest risk for infection where personal safety measures have to be strictly ensured.

According to the weekly report, 52 percent and 40 percent of the positive cases detected among “traced contacts” were from offices and households, respectively. As on August 28, positive cases from traced contacts contributed 18 percent (or 694 cases) to the state COVID-19 total. Infections acquired from social gatherings and same locality stood at 4 percent, hospitals- 3 percent and transport- 1 percent.

With 8 confirmed deaths, the mortality rate was 0.21 percent, below the North-East average of 0.33 percent.

Case detection has reduced significantly in August. The past week reported only 186 cases compared to 297cases the week before or 483 cases in the two-week period from August 7-28.

Further, the number of cases has not doubled since the last doubling-up from 1693 cases on July 31 to 3322 cases on August 7. Technically, Nagaland’s doubling rate remains at 14 days.

The recovery rate has improved to 75 percent from 57 percent last week. India’s current recovery rate stands at 76 percent.

A total of 4186 samples were tested in the past week returning a positivity rate of 4.4 percent, which was lower than the 5.7 percent of the preceding week. The state’s current positivity rate is at 6.47 percent against the country’s 8.57 percent.

In total, the state has tested 58,846 samples till date— RT PCR-35,631, Truenat-22559 and Antigen Test-656.

The testing rate however went down below the national average during the past week. After weeks of faring better than the national average, this week’s analysis tipped the state testing rate at 27.1 per thousand against the national 29.9 per thousand. Nagaland’s testing rate, as per the previous week’s data, was 26 per thousand.

In terms of contribution to the state total of positive cases, the armed forces continued to lead at 43 percent, returnees- 32 percent and traced contacts-18 percent. The percentage of frontline workers remained static at 7 percent.

It added, “A total of 16,530 contacts have been traced by the surveillance teams out of which 5716 are primary contacts.”

The average of positive cases was worked out at 32 years with the youngest being a 5-month old and the oldest being a 93 year-old.

Gender-wise, 82 percent of the patients have been males, while 0.42 percent has co-morbidities.

50 percent of the cases are from Dimapur, followed by Kohima at 23 percent, while 7 percent of the active cases were under home isolation.