Nadeem Nadu
Srinagar, April 22 : While Covid cases are on the rise in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) and Maharashtra among few other places in India, experts on Friday said that there was no need to panic as long as hospitalization remains minimal.
“There is no need for panic given the fact that cases are few and hospitalizations on account of covid-19 are almost zero,” Dr Naveed Nazir Shah, Kashmir’s top pulmonologist and Head of the Department at Chest Disease Hospital Srinagar, told GNS. “The SOPs are largely relaxed but if any surge happens, there is need to go back to following SoPs in letter and spirit,” he said.
Sources said that presently a lesser number of tests are being conducted and the number of cases may not present the actual situation. However, they said, severity is far less with hardly anyone requiring hospitalization.
Seconding it, Dr Naveed stressed that the number of cases does not matter so much as long as hospitalization is negligible. “If the situation arises that there is need for hospitalization then only there is need for strict adherence to SOPs,” he added.
HoD Social and Preventive Medicine, GMC Srinagar, Dr Saleem Khan also said no major steps were needed to be taken as the hospitalization does not demand the same.
The seven-day average of daily infections, a number that denotes a region’s Covid-19 case curve, in New Delhi has climbed to 636 for the week ended Thursday. This number, which was falling for almost three months since mid-January when the city’s Omicron wave peaked, has now been slowly rising. For the week ended March 31, the city reported 103 cases every single day on average.
The number of cases in Jammu and Kashmir remains far low and mainly in single digit. However experts have been warning against any complacency. While the Delhi government was forced to order the wearing of masks earlier this week, the Tamil Nadu health department on Friday made wearing facemasks in public mandatory as a preventive step to control the surge of Covid-19 cases. Anybody found without a face mask will have to pay a penalty of Rs 500 in the South Indian state.
With 2,451 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, India’s total tally of Covid-19 cases climbed to 4,30,52,425, while the active cases increased to 14,241, according to the Union health ministry data updated on April 22. (GNS)
