A huge five-day survey involving 57.3 lakh Delhiites who are living in COVID hotspots, were aimed at identifying and isolating the symptomatic or infected people. This exercise has found only 13,516 symptomatic people and the positivity rate of those tested at 6.4%.

Besides, the 13,516 people found to be symptomatic by the 9,000 three member teams that surveyed across Delhi’s 11 districts and 8,413 contacts of the symptomatic people were traced. A total of 18,336 people, which includes 11,790 symptomatic people and 6,546 contacts had underwent RT-PCR tests between November 20 - 24, out of them 1,178 people returned with positive results.

On Wednesday, a Delhi government statement said that positivity rate in Delhi is declining. On November 25, the positivity was 8.5% while on November 7, it was 15%. The district officials said that the door-to-door survey in containment zones would continue.

In the symptomatic individuals identified, the highest number was, 3,796, in South-West district, and was followed by East (2,744), North-West (1,957) and in West (1,330). Out of the 1,178 who tested positive, 288 people were from Central district, 275 people in New Delhi, 197 people in West, 196 people in South-West and 118 people in South-East.

The official said that the main objective of this exercise was to hunt the maximum symptomatic cases, test them and trace their contacts. They might have not found a high number of symptomatic individuals, the exercise did serve IEC (Information, Education and Communication) purposes. Several people came forward for testing and with their teams reaching hotspots, awareness too has increased.

The government official said that their teams had asked detailed questions regarding the symptoms. Initially, they faced resistance in several localities and might possible that numerous people have avoided answering all questions completely. The teams checked people with thermal guns and oximeters, however these do not always detect COVID cases as several infected people didn’t have high fever or low oxygen saturation levels.

The survey was carried out in the 4,456 containment zones with active cases and also in areas neighbouring these containment zones along with other busy places. There are total 23,915 active cases in the containment zones, out of which 4,719 cases are in West district, South-East (4,421 cases), East (3,911 cases), South-West (2,389 cases) and North (2,347 cases) districts. Shahdara district has only 12 active cases in containment zones.

Source: The Times of India