Central Team In Odisha: Is Coronavirus Taking Wings In  State?

Within 24 hours after Odisha pressed the unlock button in as many as 20 districts, the Centre on July 2 announced the rushing of a team of health experts to the State. The Union Health Ministry dispatched health expert teams to only 6 states that have shown a trend of rising in Covid-19 cases. 

Significantly, the six states under Central scanner are Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Manipur, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. While the fact of bothering about Kerala is the State tops the daily positive tally in the country with over 10k cases, the state of worry for Arunachal Pradesh is a massive 76 per cent of its districts record a weekly positive rate in the range of 12-96 per cent.

The tense fact about Manipur is almost half of the State is recording a weekly positive rate (WPR) in the range of 11-22 per cent. The same is the state of affairs in Tripura - where the WPR in 50 per cent of districts remains in the range of 11 - 24 per cent.

Chhattisgarh: The peculiarity observed here is only one (Sukma) of 28 districts in the State have a WPR of 14 per cent. Moreover, the 7 days moving average of new cases have dropped to 347 on the week ending July 4 vis-a-vis 373 on  June 27. The only nagging trend observed is the 7-day moving average of active count in the State seems to veer to the positive side (means the shrink in active caseload has slowed down).

The Odisha Case

The State has only 3 districts where the WPR (June 28-July 4) is over 10 per cent. The districts are Nuapada, Balasore and Dhenkanal. But the points of concern are:

•    Odisha is the 5th State to post a daily positive count of over 2k ( 2870 cases today), when the table is led by Kerala (12.1k), Maharashtra (9.336k), Tamil Nadu (3.867k) and Andra Pradesh (3.185k).

•    The Big Worry: After the lockdown relaxations, first in 17 and now in 20 districts, the 7-day moving average of daily positive count tells a different tale.

•    Sample the following. A reality check of the last 30-days.

•    Week Jun 6-13: The 7-day moving average of confirmed cases dropped by over 31 per cent
•    Week 13-20: The 7-day moving average drop had been nearly 17 per cent.
•    Week 20-27: Unlock process in State started on July 17 in 17 districts. The drop in the 7-day moving average gets slower. It has been only around 10 per cent.
•    Week Jun 27 - Jul 4:  From July 1, unlock clocks in 20 dists, the drop in 7-day moving average turned very slow to end at around 6%. (see the image below).

dip in daily cases over a 7-day period slows down

•    Weekly Positive rate in Ganjam, post unlock, up at 1.2% from 0.9 per cent a week ago.
•    The same has shot up marginally in Deogarh and Kandhamal. 

Apart from the indicator, the alerting home-truth is the shrinking of active caseload has slowed down (Take a look at the image below). And if the trend continues then the State may witness a rise in active caseload. 

Active caseload slows down