The third Covid wave has crossed its peak in Jammu and Kashmir as infections are declining continuously for the past six days, health experts said.
The UT on Monday recorded 15 deaths and 2,550 cases, the lowest daily tally in the past 18 days. Kashmir saw 1,576 cases and five deaths while 974 cases and 10 deaths were reported in the Jammu division.
“What I can see from the weekly data is that we have certainly crossed the peak,” said Dr. Rouf Hussain Rather, community medicine specialist and in charge of data analysis at divisional Covid control room in Kashmir.
He said the data shows that the peak has crossed seven of the 10 districts of Kashmir. “In Bandipora, Ganderbal and Srinagar, the cases are still to cross the peak, but overall the Valley has crossed the threshold,” he said. “Similarly, Jammu also follows the trend,” he added. “Hopefully, now the cases will either come down or at most will continue with the current rate and then drop,” he said.
The UT saw 146 deaths and 94,135 cases in January – the second-highest monthly total cases after May 2021, which had recorded 1.14 lakh cases and 1,625 deaths when the second wave had peaked. The test positivity rate (TPR) of the month was 4.51% while May last year had witnessed a TPR of 9%.
Health experts say that the region is now seeing R (naught) or R number of less than 1. R number is the number of people an infected person will pass on the virus to.
“We have crossed the peak. We are coming down and we have reached R (naught) of less than 1 which means that the disease transmission is stopping and may become endemic. It will reach baseline in a month’s time,” said Prof Dr Mohammad Salim Khan, head of the department of community medicine at Government Medical College, Srinagar, and nodal officer for Covid.
The active cases in the union territory were at 36,372 on Monday.
The data reveals that 20.8 lakh tests were conducted in January with 67,274 tests on an average daily, a major jump from past months.
Health experts say that the wave will end by the end of February and the government should now think of opening sectors affected by Covid.
“We should think of starting activities in March – at the individual as well as community level, particularly education,” said Dr. Rouf Hussain.
The overall number of people who have recovered reached 3,94,379, while the recovery rate stood at 90.57%.
Since the pandemic started, the total cases in J&K have mounted to 4,35,425 and the death toll has reached 4,674.
