HYDERABAD: The first phase of the fever survey, which was taken up in Telangana in the beginning of May 2021, appears to have brought to fore the true extent of COVID-19 outbreak in the second wave.
Nearly 6.70 lakh people were found having flu-like symptoms similar to COVID-19 and have been put on symptomatic treatment for COVID-19, according to government data. Meanwhile, during the same period, the health bulletin showed that over 1,62,120 tested positive for COVID-19.
If we put these two figures together, the number has touched nearly 8 lakh in just last 30 days! This suggests that a wider prevalence of the virus may be possible than what the formal testing mechanism managed to detect.
"The fever survey was conducted via COVID-19 OP services across 1,518 government health facilities in the State. Via this, around 2,78,502 individuals were found having COVID-19 symptoms and treated. We screened nearly 13.5 lakh," informed Director of Public Health Dr G Srinivas Rao, during a press briefing on Wednesday.
Apart from this, the first round of fever survey was conducted by covering 1,01,28,711 households, where nearly 2,41,103 symptomatic individuals were detected.
The round two of the survey, which is currently underway, has covered 46,70,350 households and detected another 1,50,570 symptomatic cases. With this, total symptomatic cases are pegged at 6,70,175 cases via fever survey.
However, while all those with symptoms can’t be categorised as COVID positive cases, since common flus and COVID have similar symptoms at the outset, a hint into at least some of these being COVID-19 cases is from the fact that Director of Public Health in his press address last week had said that at any given point of time nearly 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent of the population will usually have flu symptoms.
In fact another dataset which shows how intense the second wave has been, can be seen in the fact that, to date, the State has only had 5.60 lakh confirmed cases of COVID-19 but the fever survey of last one month individually surpasses this figure indicative of a possibly far more extensive spread of COVID-19 than tests have detected.
However, officials say that all trends suggest that the curve will flatten soon. "The hospitalisations across government facilities have fallen. You may not see the impact so soon in Gandhi and TIMS hospitals as they are tertiary care units. However, all other hospitals are seeing a significant dip. Furthermore, the strategy to extend treatment using the opportunity of fever survey itself is yielding results," added officials.