Data from districts like Yavatmal, Akola, Amravati and Wardha show that their daily COVID-19 positivity rates are higher than or as bad as the peak witnessed in September last year. Experts from the state went on to say that Vidarbha is the epicentre for the February surge of cases similar to how Pune and Mumbai were the epicentres back in September 2020.
Yavatmal’s daily positivity rate on Sunday was at 41.4 per cent which is almost twice as much as the cases it witnessed on September 15 (21.7 per cent). Meanwhile, Amravati’s positivity rate stands at 38 per cent which is higher than the region’s 32.5 per cent positivity rate in September.
The biggest impact has been felt at Wardha which only witnessed an 8.5 per cent positivity rate in September and has now seen the rate jump to 24 per cent. Akola’s positivity rate stands at 29 per cent which is slightly higher than the figures it showed in September 2020. It’s worth pointing out that Akola has carried out double the number of tests now as compared to the previous surge.
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Officials said that they picked figures from September as a metric to understand where regions and districts stand now given that it was a time when COVID-19 cases were at a peak across Maharashtra, particularly on September 15.
Dr Milind Kamble, Dean at Government Medical College, Yavatmal said that the difference between the surge now and in September is that doctors are witnessing entire families being hospitalized now while cases were somewhat isolated last year. “We have six families whose all members are affected and currently hospitalised,” Dr Kamble said.
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A closer look at the data also shows that six of the eleven districts in Vidarbha have almost three to four times the positivity rate of Maharashtra’s current average. Head of the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), Dr T P Lahane said that hospitalisations in the Vidarbha region have seen a jump of over 20 to 30 per cent in the last two weeks.
Genomic sequencing of four patients from Amravati last week showed the mutation E484Q while four samples from Yavatmal revealed the N440K mutation. Dr Lahane said that they are currently studying more than 300 samples to learn if there’s a correlation between the mutations and the new surge.
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