Urban clusters see spike again as restrictions lifted

Gurugram: After having reported less than 100 daily cases for 20 consecutive days, Gurugram's daily COVID-19 spike has again risen above the 100-mark in the last few days and this is largely owing to a few urban clusters which started reporting cases as lockdown restrictions were relaxed.

These clusters have been identified as Wazirabad, which accounts for over 22 per cent of the cases coming in, Lakshaman Vihar, which is reporting 20 per cent of the new cases, Chanderlok at 17 per cent, Sohna at 11 per cent and Bhangrola at 10 per cent.

Significantly, this rise in daily cases is despite low testing, which health officials in the district say is a result of the Serological survey that is underway. With most frontline workers involved in collecting and testing samples for the district's second serosurvey, around 12,169 samples were collected for testing in the last week - the lowest weekly testing count in six weeks.

The health officials, however, have given assurance that testing will increase after the serosurvey is completed.

Meanwhile, district authorities here have set an ambitious target of testing three lakh industrial workers who live and work in the factories of Sohna and Manesar. As of now, a total of 7,000 have been tested with 500 of them testing positive for the virus.

Officials in the health department are examining whether the sudden increase in the number of cases has been a result of relaxing lockdown measures.

With lockdown restrictions being lifted, the number of containment zones in Gurugram city was reduced from 100 in July to seven as per the latest data, following which saily cases started spiking again.