JOIN USAhmedabad claws its way back after weathering coronavirus blow
Hospital beds are empty, most of the coronavirus care centres are closed, number of positive cases are dropping, and so are the casualties: this hardly seems like Ahmedabad, where the virus cut a swathe through the city.
But over the past two weeks, Gujarat's largest city, where the pandemic blow fell the hardest, seems to be clawing its way back, especially in terms of mortality rate. Although the fight to contain the spread is far from over, the pandemic in Ahmedabad seems to be "under control".
According to doctors, who are part of a panel being consulted by the state government, the situation has shown signs of improvement in the walled-city area.
"As per the data, it seems that herd immunity has developed in the central part of Ahmedabad or walled-city, the most densely populated area, which was the first to have been hit hard and remained the epicenter for over two months," said Dr Dileep Mavlankar, Director of Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar.
But government officials denied the "herd immunity" theory.
A senior health official cited "proper planning" as the reason for improvement. "We are also witnessing the severity of the virus becoming milder," he said. "Besides, people are more aware and come to hospital early, unlike previously where they used to wait due to which many people died."
Strangely, the government also denied that the pandemic was in the "community transmission" stage despite the fact that the tracing of the virus in the state was stopped more than two months ago.
But another doctor, who is also part of the panel, was not so sanguine. "The government is not transparent in providing us data," he said. "We are also witnessing that the average number of tests in Ahmedabad has gone down."
The doctor said it was "too early to say that we have a model to control the coronavirus". "If you look at Ahmedabad's test positivity rate, it is still nearly 14% which is not very encouraging. It has to go down below 5%," he said.
Ahmedabad city has over 22,590 positive cases. According to data, the positivity rate in the past couple of days has come down to 10%.