90% active cases in Chandigarh asymptomatic, mild

Naina Mishra

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 16

Around 90 per cent patients in the city are either asymptomatic or mild cases while the remaining have moderate to critical Covid-19 illness.

The World Health Organisation had recently stated that people who are in their 20s, 30s and 40s often tend to be asymptomatic and are hence the drivers of the disease.

Rajesh Kumar, former Head, Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, PGI, said, “The probability of passing the infection from asymptomatic patients is lower than that of symptomatic patients. However, asymptomatic patients are more in number and producing more cases of infections. For example, 90 asymptomatic patients with probability of 0.5 per cent may infect 45 more persons while 10 symptomatic patients with probability of 2 per cent can infect 20.”

Kumar said, “The transmission mode is obvious for symptomatic people i.e. coughing or sneezing. On the other hand, an asymptomatic patient can transmit the virus while singing or talking loudly. Therefore, the use of masks should be advocated strongly. This can prevent inadvertent spread by an asymptomatic person who is not aware of his/her positive status.” As on September 15, there were 2,991 active cases in the city.

A data shared by the UT Administration shows that a majority of the patients (2,319), who have opted home isolation, and 384 patients lodged at Covid care centres are either asymptomatic or mild cases. A total of 117 patients, who are moderate to critical cases, are admitted to the dedicated Covid hospitals — the PGI and the Civil Hospital, Sector 48.

Besides, 171 patients are admitted to the dedicated Covid health centres — the GMSH-16, the GMCH-32 and the civil hospitals in Sector 22 and 45 and Mani Majra.