One in every two people tested positive for coronavirus in GOA

In Goa, the southwestern state of India, one in every two people tested positive for deadly coronavirus. The ratio makes the state with the highest positivity rate countrywide. However, it is the number that is only among the people getting tested for the virus – meaning the actual infection rate among the untested population may be greater than the reported one.

On Friday, Vishwajit P. Rane, the Health Minister of Goa, said that the state hit a new record with a high positivity rate of around 51.4 percent. He also suggested a complete lockdown in the state to curb the spread of COVID-19. As of Friday, almost 690,370 tests done in Goa, according to the Press Information Bureau of Goa.

Moreover, he adds that Pramod Sawant, the Chief Minister of Goa, was seriously considering a complete lockdown in the state because it is the need of the hour. The health department is facing issues of oxygen supply along with other problems. Additionally, the administration needs to bring the positivity rate down as it is the only way to move forward.

Second Wave of Coronavirus in India

The second wave of COVID-19 hit the populous states and major cities of India hardly. New cases in Delhi, the capital of India, started to mount in late March, increasingly instantly in April. Furthermore, as the fatal virus spread from state to state countrywide, other areas of the territory started to see their own surge in coronavirus cases, sometimes some weeks after the central hotspots.

GOA, the Famous Tourists Place in India

Goa, a tourist place famous for its beaches, is home to around 1.5M people – a figure which possibly increased since the last survey in 2011. It saw its rise started in April, as Delhi was already struggling with the same situation – but infections climb unexpectedly during the previous fourteen days. In addition, the state recorded over thirty-eight hundred cases on Thursday, the highest figure so far.

The rapid spike in the cases raised the alarm among the governmental authorities as they prepared for the type of disaster unfolding in other states of the country. The administration closed public spaces such as gyms, cinemas, bars, and schools along with the banning of social and political gatherings. Moreover, the administration encouraged the residents to work from home and imposed lockdown restrictions on capacity and opening hours on shops and restaurants.

Rane said that the health system of Goa was wholly overloaded with a huge number of patients. The authorities are doing everything possible to combat the situation. In the same way, they enhanced the testing capacity and facilities to identify the coronavirus patients before their symptoms appear.

Likewise, the state authorities are in the process of obtaining testing and healing equipment to conduct genome sequencing to find out which variant of COVID-19 was spreading in the community and whether strains might be spreading. Further, he adds that they discover that the infection rate of the new variant is very high, so it is creating a lot of problems.