Anantnag: The daily Covid infections have now been over the 700 mark, for at least three days in a row, taking the overall fresh infections in the last week of July to well over 4500 – way more than the number of infections in the last four months put together.
Eight people have died in the said week as well. The death toll equals the cumulative deaths in the last four months. The number of infections has drastically increased since mid-July when the daily infections were below 150.
And now the number of infections has surpassed 700 and has remained there for at least three days in a row – including July 29, 30, and 31.
The numbers reveal that 4591 fresh infections have been reported between July 24 and July 31. “The numbers are over the top if a comparison with the previous months is made,” an official, privy to the data on Covid-19, told Kashmir Reader.
A closer look at the numbers reveals that 813 infections were reported in the month of June; 1618 in the month of May; 275 in the month of April; and 740 in the month of March.
“All these numbers out together is a total of 3446 infections in these months, cumulatively. It is a thousand cases lesser than the total in the last one week,” the official said, adding that the situation was worrisome.
Most of these fresh cases have been reported from the Kashmir division. Records show that 3016 of the total cases between July 24 and July 31 have been reported from the Kashmir division and only 1575 in the ten districts of the Jammu division.
“The death count is however higher in the Jammu division – with five of the 8 deaths being reported there and only three in the Kashmir division,” the official said.
He said that the number of deaths is on the higher side as well when compared to the previous four months. “There were four deaths in June, one each in May and April, and two in March. And now we have these many deaths in just a week’s time,” the official said.
Meanwhile, the number of active positive cases has steeply spiraled upwards. There has been almost a nine-fold increase in the number of active positive cases through the month of July.
On July 1 the number of active positive cases was a meager 545, and the number has now reached 4859. “Even on July 20, the number of active positive cases was just 1724,” the official said, “The infections have been coming rapidly now,”
The present active positive cases too are distributed unevenly between Kashmir and Jammu divisions, as the former has 3071 such cases and the latter has only 1788 of them.
Srinagar district in Kashmir division continues to be the worst hit with 1609 active positive Covid infections. “Baramulla district in North Kashmir has seen a surprising spike in the number of infections. At present, the district has over 700 active infections, way more than Anantnag, in South, which comes at the third number with just 169 active infections,” the official said.
Interestingly Srinagar, Baramulla, and Anantnag districts have more or less the same populations and yet a huge disparity in the number of infections.

Suhail A Shah