Gujarat: From 80%, Covid share of 8 big cities drops to 51% in July

AHMEDABAD: On June 23, the daily Covid-19 share of eight cities of Gujarat – Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Gandhinagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar which are governed by municipal corporations – was 80%. Out of 549 cases recorded daily, 437 cases were from these cities while only 112 were detected in other districts.
A month later – as the state touched its highest daily tally of 1,110 on July 26 – the share of eight cities plummeted to a record low of 48% with a tally of 533 while the rest of the state recorded the highest ever case tally of 577 cases.Compared to June 23, the rise was 22% in urban areas while the countryside recorded an alarming five fold rise in viral infection.

On Monday, the tally improved a bit – with the eight cities recording 51% of the cases with a tally of 538 against 514 in the rest of the state.
“There is a marked shift pattern of Covid-19 spread. Earlier it was concentrated in the densely-populated clusters of cities such as Ahmedabad and Surat. But unlock 1 and 2 witnessed massive migration from the urban areas to interiors of the state,” said a citybased epidemiologist
Surat surpasses city in new cases
Surat city overtook Ahmedabad as the biggest contributor of Covid-19 cases in Gujarat in the past 30 days. Compared to 5,166 cases in Ahmedabad from June 28 to July 27, Surat added 5,963 cases. Ahmedabad’s daily cases average was 172 compared to Surat’s 199. The two cities together account for 42.6% of the cases recorded in Gujarat.

However, Ahmedabad saw more deaths than the Diamond City, with 164 deaths in past 30 days, slightly higher than Surat’s157. The two cities accounted for 57.5% of Gujarat’s deaths in this period. While Ahmedabad’s share was 29%, Surat’s was 28%, analysis of the figures revealed.
Ahmedabad’s death rate for the past 30 days was 3.2%, compared to Surat’s 2.6%. The cumulative death rate for the eight biggest cities in the state was 2.5%, compared to1.7% for the rest of the state.
On July 26, for the first time, the share of the eight municipal corporations in Gujarat – Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Junagadh and Gandhinagar – went below 50% of the daily cases, at 48%. The share of these cities has seen a constant decline from 80% on June 23 to 48% on July 26. Experts attribute the steady increase of Covid-19 cases in rural areas of the districts to multiple factors.
Compared to Covid cases, deaths were found to be concentrated in cities – in the past 30 days, Gujarat recorded 558 Covid deaths of which 374 were from the eight cities, a 67:33 ratio. Thus, two of every three deaths of Covid patients took place in city hospitals or homes, state health department figures revealed.
“After Ahmedabad, Surat has emerged as a Covid-19 hotspot in terms of cases and deaths. Stringent measures are required to ensure that the spread doesn’t become uncontrollable in areas outside cities, where the health infrastructure is not very strong,” said a city-based epidemiologist.