Complacency causing spike in COVID-19 cases in MP: Experts

After registering a drop inCOVID-19 cases for some weeks, the viral disease is againshowing an upward trend in Madhya Pradesh, specially itsindustrial hub Indore, with experts blaming people forlowering their guard against the pandemic.

Since the past one week, more than 200 COVID-19 casesare being reported daily in MP, prompting the state governmentto send some samples of patients to labs in Delhi and Pune tocheck whether a new variant of the virus has found its wayinto the state, a government official said.

The Centre recently said four people were detectedwith the South Africa variant of SARS-CoV-2 in India inJanuary, while one tested positive for the Brazil variantstrain in the first week of February.

In September 2020, Madhya Pradesh witnessed a dailycount of more than 2,000 cases for 10 consecutive days, butthe graph started going down by the year-end.

Earlier this month, the daily COVID-19 cases werebelow 200 in the state, but crossed the mark on February 14.

So far, the state has reported a total of 2,59,128COVID-19 cases and 3,850 deaths due to the disease.

Out of 257 cases recorded in MP on Saturday, 131 werefrom Indore, which has been the worst-hit by COVID-19 in thestate, as per official figures.

Indore has so far reported 929 deaths due to COVID-19,thehighest among all districts in the state.

All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS),Bhopal, Director Dr Sarman Singh told PTI that the cases wereswelling as MP shares borders with Maharashtra, which has beenbadly hit by the pandemic.

Besides, people have become complacent against thepandemic, he said.

''The infection was expected to re-surge. Therefore,people should not be complacent till the last man in thecountry is cured of the pandemic,'' he said.

Amid the spike, 100 samples of patients, mostly fromIndore, have been sent to the National Centre for DiseaseControl in New Delhi and the Pune-based National Institute ofVirology to check whether a new virus strain has entered MP, agovernment official said.

Indore's nodal officer for COVID-19 prevention, AmitMalakar, also said the spurt in cases of late is due to the''careless approach of people'', after the graph of cases showeda downward trajectory last month.

''Nowadays, people in many places are seen withoutmasks or not wearing face coverings properly. Besides,adherence to physical distancing norms and use of sanitisershave also gone down drastically,'' he said.

An analysis of the government data shows the viruspositivity rate - proportion of positive cases from the totalnumber of samples - which was 0.9 per cent in MP on February12, shot up to 1.9 per cent on February 19.

A total of 161 people in MP tested positive onFebruary 12, and the number rose to 297 on February 19.

The number of daily COVID-19 cases has been above the200-mark since February 14.