Ludhiana district’s daily positivity rate touches record low at 3.99%

Nitin Jain

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, May 22

Showing the sign of gradual retreat and plateauing of the impact of devastating second Covid wave, the daily positivity rate, a key indicator of virus surge, on Saturday touched a record low of 3.99 per cent, with the month’s lowest so far as 582 of the total 14,580 samples testing positive in Ludhiana district during the past 24 hours.

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The positivity rate has dropped drastically within 20 days by a whopping 15.58 per cent from the highest-ever 19.57 per cent recorded here on May 2.

With this, Ludhiana, which was dubbed as the Covid capital of Punjab after emerging as the worst-hit district in the state, has turned out to be among the safest districts with the second lowest positivity rate after Tarn Taran, which registered the minimum 3.92 positivity rate in the state. This was also almost half than the state’s daily average positivity rate of 6.92 per cent.

The official data compiled by the district administration, which is available with The Tribune, revealed that Ludhiana’s positivity rate started at a high of 18.92 per cent on the first day of May and further rising and touching its peak of 19.57 per cent on May 2.

Thereafter, it came down to 13.95 per cent on May 3, rising to 14.88 per cent on May 4, dipping to 10.83 per cent on May 5, again going up to 12.11 per cent on May 6, 14.12 per cent on May 7, down to 12.33 per cent on May 8, shooting up to 17.18 per cent on May 9, 17.7 per cent on May 10, decreasing to 13.86 per cent on May 11, 9.34 per cent on May 12 and once again rising to 10.75 per cent on May 13.

Since the last week, the daily positivity rate was constantly dropping from 8.69 per cent on May 14 to 7.76 per cent on May 15, 6.35 per cent on May 16, slightly rising to 6.65 per cent on May 17, 6.79 per cent on May 18, again coming down to 4.82 per cent on May 19, going up to 5.32 per cent on May 20, and once again dipping to 5.05 per cent on May 21 and touching a record low of 3.99 per cent on May 22.

The weekly average positivity rate, analysed by the Health and Family Welfare Department, showed that Ludhiana reported 7.3 per cent positivity rate between May 13 and 19, which was sixth lowest in the state and almost one-third less than state’s average of 10.7 per cent.

While Mohali continued to record the highest positivity rate of 21.8 per cent between May 13 and 19, Nawanshahr remained the state’s safest district with the lowest figure of 4.7 per cent.

The districts, which fared better than Ludhiana between May 13 and 19 were Gurdaspur 6.7 per cent, Sangrur and Kapurthala 6.6 per cent each, and Tarn Taran 5.8 per cent.

Those worst-hit than Ludhiana included Ferozepur 20.4 per cent, Bathinda 18.5 per cent, Fazilka 14.4 per cent, Muktsar 13.5 per cent, Ropar 13.4 per cent, Mansa 13.2 per cent, Pathankot 12.3 per cent, Jalandhar 12 per cent, Faridkot 11.9 per cent, Patiala 11.3 per cent, Moga 9.8 per cent, Barnala 9.7 per cent, Amritsar 9.1 per cent, Hoshiarpur 8.7 per cent and Fatehgarh Sahib registered 8.1 per cent weekly positivity rate between May 13 and 19.