COVID-19: Every third person infected in Uttarakhand is from Dehradun

Express News Service

DEHRADUN: Dehradun not only has 35% of the total number of cases in Uttarakhand but has also recorded the highest number of cases per lakh of population with 149, revealed a 15-day analysis from December 7-21.

Uttarakhand’s average number of cases per lakh is 76. Other districts which have a high number of cases per lakh of population include Nainital (130), Pithoragarh (113), Chamoli (104) and Uttarkashi (103).

Anoop Nautiyal, whose Social Development for Communities Foundation analysed the data, said, “Dehradun still has a high number of cases overall. Every third person infected in the state is from Dehradun. We need to be more vigilant than ever as the new COVID strain may have entered the country and be spreading fast.”

The estimated population of Uttarakhand is calculated at 115.24 lakh.

Surprisingly, Udham Singh Nagar and Haridwar districts have least cases per lakh of population in the state with 28 and 21 respectively.

Other districts such as Rudraprayag with 93 cases per lakh population followed by Bageshwar (75), Pauri (66), Champawat (65) and Tehri (52) hover somewhere in between.

In the span of 15 days, a total of 8768 cases emerged in Uttarakhand out of which maximum cases were detected in Dehradun with 3085, making it 35% of the total cases.

Nainital had a total of 1512 cases surfacing in this period comprising 17% of total cases which is around half of Dehradun in terms of percentage.

Interestingly, the gap kept widening as Haridwar which ranked third in total number of cases between December 7-21 had 8% of total cases with 656 followed by Pauri (466) with 5%, Udham Singh Nagar (427) 5%, Chamoli (414) 5%, Almora (377) 4%, Uttarkashi (346) 4%, Tehri (329) 4%, Rudraprayag (229) 3%, Bageshwar (199) 2% and Champawat (173) with 2% of total cases.

Till Tuesday evening, the total number of active cases in the state stood at 5512. A total of 1439 people have lost their lives, with the death rate due to Covid standing at 1.65%. The recovery rate in the state was recorded at 90.80%, with a total of 79341 having recovered out of 87376 infected.