NEW DELHI, May 25: With the number of COVID-19 cases increasing continuously in the Northeastern states including Meghalaya, the region could become the next hotspot for the pandemic in its second wave, a new study has revealed.
Development Data Lab, a research organisation working on open data, and a team led by University of Chicago’s Prof Anup Malani, calculate the reproductive rate for the COVID-19 outbreak each day. This is a measure of how many people an infected person is likely to infect in a community, and the calculations show that the value is greater than one for all Northeastern states.
A region-wise analysis showed that Assam, the biggest state in the region, saw the daily COVID cases rising from below 900 to over 5,000 consistently in the past week and it hit the peak of 6,221 fresh cases on Monday.
Assam is followed by Manipur, where daily caseload breached the 700-mark last week with positivity rate crossing 20%.
In Meghalaya, the daily caseload rose from 95 to over 630 in a month. Meghalaya’s test positivity ratio also jumped from under 5% to over 20%, peaking on May 17 at over 27%, the study said.
Daily cases in Mizoram surged from 62 to 150 between April 17 and May 17. The daily caseload crossed the 200-mark invariably on several days. However, it has now recorded a sporadic decline in active cases.
Nagaland also saw its daily cases rising from around 30 last month to about 275 on May 17, crossing the 300-mark on several days.
Sikkim has shown a very high positivity ratio since April-end. It stayed in the 30% region, recording almost 37% on May 17 and has consistently reported more than 200 cases per day throughout the month.
Tripura has also been witnessing a surge in cases, from under 60 on April 17 to over 760 on May 16.
In Arunachal Pradesh, active cases have shown a sporadic decline in recent days but its case positivity ratio has multiplied from 3% to around 9%.
According to reports, officials in Assam have already started preparing for another surge.
With the rate of vaccination already low in these states, the study also added concerns confirming that the virus has started to spread in remote Himalayan villages with poor health infrastructure.
