With the Covid-19 pandemic in Maharashtra already having an unexpected spurt in the cases in recent days, three states – Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh – appear to be on high alert too. Reportedly they are found to be at immediate risk of becoming the next hot spots of the disease, with a high growth rate of cases and rising positivity rates, as per an HT analysis.
To figure out the new hot spots of the outbreak, HT collected data from India’s 20 most densely populous regions, by determining three factors — a rising positivity rate, a high growth rate of daily cases, and low tests per million residents — that have marked all hot spots nation wide.
HT also assessed the marked difference in the seven-day average of daily new cases at the district level based on data collated by How India Lives.
The seven-day average of positivity rate in the state went from 7% for the week ending February 16 to 16.4% for the week ending March 17. In fact, the state has nearly four times the positivity rate of any other state in the list.
Punjab found to be at a high risk zone due to the worrisome increase in the covid case graph. The daily case trajectory of Punjab is 531%, 398% in Haryana and 277% in Madhya Pradesh respectively.
Other than the aforementioned states, the case rate is increasing at worrying levels in Andhra Pradesh (276% higher in the past 30 days), Delhi (225%) and Gujarat (224%).