COVID-19 is now in 706 of 733 districts of India

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread to 706 out of 732 districts in India, according to the latest data released by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare January 11, 2022.

The pandemic has spread to almost 96 per cent of the districts in the country in a very short span, as the country reels under the impact of the third wave driven by the omicron variant.

The weekly positivity rate has been above 10 per cent between January 3 and 9, 2022 in 120 districts across 29 states / Union territories.

This is an increase from 100 districts that had a positivity rate of more than 10 per cent January 8, 2022 (January 2-8, 2022). Between December 30 and January 5, 2022, 41 districts across 17 states / UTs had over 10 per cent positivity rate.

Positivity rate is the percentage of people who test positive for the virus of those overall who have been tested. A higher positivity rate indicates higher transmission. This also indicates that there are likely more people with the novel coronavirus in the community who haven’t been tested yet, according to John Hopkins University.  

Regions of concern

Of the 29 states and UTs, more than half of the districts in five of them have a positivity rate of more than 10 per cent. These are Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Sikkim and West Bengal.

In three of them — Chandigarh, Delhi and Goa — all districts had a high positivity rate. In Delhi, the positivity rate varied from 12.12 per cent in the southwest district to 25.44 per cent in the northwest district.

In Goa, too, at least one out of every fifth person tested had COVID-19. Gujarat and Bihar recorded one district with high positivity rate.

Geography of a pandemic: Rural or urban

At least 61 of the 120 districts with high positivity rates were rural; seven of these feature among the top 20 worst-affected districts.

Among rural districts (those with more than 60 per cent rural population), Lahaul-Spiti in Himachal Pradesh had the highest positivity rate. Every third out of the fifth person tested had COVID-19.

Birbhum in West Bengal was the second-worst affected rural district with a positivity rate of 32.90.    

At least 58 urban districts had a high positivity rate (that is above 10 per cent); 13 of these feature among the top 20 worst-affected districts. Among urban districts, Kolkata has the highest positivity rate (58.86). 

Howrah (49) in West Bengal was the second-worst affected urban district, where nearly half of those tested were COVID-19-positive.

In 106 districts across 23 states / UTs, the weekly positivity rate had been between 5 and 10 per cent.  

Of these, 15 more districts with a positivity rate above 9 per cent were very likely to move up, from Union health ministry’s list of districts with positivity rate between 5 and 10 per cent to more than 10 per cent.

These include Koderma (Jharkhand), Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh), Fatehgarh Sahib (Punjab) and Charaideo (Assam).  

The positivity rate varied from 0.01 per cent to 4.9 per cent in 502 districts or close to 69 per cent of the districts.  

The virus has so far not been detected in 14 districts in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. It has not been detected in 10 districts of Telangana as well.

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