For the second week, Haryana recorded a slight increase of 69 more coronavirus infections last week as compared to the week before.
According to statistics, the state registered 684 infections last week (February 15-21) as compared to 615 reported the week before (February 8-14).
An all time low of 534 infections were reported between Feb 1-7. The state had reported an all time high 17,616 viral infections during September 14-20 last year.
Health officials said the limited increase in number of infections is not a cause of worry yet. Additional chief secretary (ACS), health, Rajeev Arora said the department has been testing over a lakh individuals every week and the positivity rate is 4.9%. “But we are conscious of the fact that there is always a possibility of a surge in infections. So, we are not taking things lightly,” he said.
The number of total active infections (861) continued to stay to a three-digit figure for the third successive week. “The recovery rate stays at 98.6% and the mortality rate at 1.1%,” health officials said.
The ACS said that sampling has been consistent at well over a lakh individual every week even when infection rate was on decline. The health department tested about one lakh persons last week and about 1.29 lakh persons the week before.
Data shows that though four districts- Faridabad (8.7%), Gurugram (7.2%), Rewari (7.1%) and Panchkula (6.1%) – continued to have critical positivity rate of more than 6%, the rate continues to decline steadily. While three districts – Nuh (0.9%), Charkhi Dadri (1.2%) and Jhajjar (1.9%) – have a desirable positivity rate of less than 2%, the remaining 15 districts have a positivity rate in the range of 2.5% to 5.6%, according to the data.
Vaccine wastage below 10%
Health officials said that the average vaccine wastage in state was 8.3% as per latest figures. This is well below the programmatic wastage of 10% allowed by the Union ministry of health, they said.
As per the vaccine coverage data up to February 20, the state has administered 2,28,180 doses against the actual dose consumption of 2,48,828. This also means that more than 91% of the doses have been successfully utilised for inoculation, officials said.
“The wastage is more for Covaxin since each vial has 10ml vaccine (20 doses) while each Covishield vial has 5ml vaccine (10 doses),” said an official.
