With Covid-19 cases rapidly increasing in the state amidst the second wave, the four districts of Punjab’s Doaba region — Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Nawanshahr and Kapurthala — are under the scanner, reporting 38.2 per cent of the total active cases of Punjab, 25.6 per cent of the deaths and 24 per cent of the total confirmed cases till March 18.

Until recently, the highest number of daily cases was being recorded in Nawanshahr, until Jalandhar took its place on Thursday. It was in Nawanshahr that the first Covid death of the state was recorded, and the fourth of the nation on March 19, 2020, following which the Doaba had remained in focus for several weeks before cases started getting reported in other districts of the state as well.

On Thursday, Jalandhar had reported 510 Covid cases, which was not only the highest of the district on any single day but also the highest in the state. District Nodal Officer Dr T P S Sandu said that out of the 510 cases, 467 were new cases and 43 were repeat samples and of people belonging to other districts. He blamed community spread and people not adhering to Covid norms of wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.

Health officials said that for the past couple of months, people have become very careless and are hardly wearing masks or social distancing and authorities too were quite reluctant. But now with the increasing cases in the last two weeks, they have become stricter. Despite night curfew, in several hotels, bigwigs are having night parties, said sources.

Till Thursday, Jalandhar topped the active cases list at 2,162, which is 15 per cent of the total active cases of the state, followed by 1,672 and 1,549 active cases in Mohali and Ludhiana districts, respectively. There were 14,366 active cases in Punjab on Thursday.

Till March 18, 24,948 confirmed cases had been recorded in Jalandhar, out of which 21,995 have recovered and 791 deaths (3.1 per cent) took place.

Apart from Jalandhar, three more districts of the Doaba region — Hoshiarpur, Nawanshahr and Kapurthala — recorded high Covid-19 active cases with 1,338 in Hoshiarpur, which has a 3.7 per cent death rate and 7 per cent of total deaths in the state, 1,114 active cases in Nawanshahr and 885 in Kapurthala with 3 per cent death rate and 3.5 per cent of the total deaths in the state.

On Thursday, Hoshiarpur recorded 216 new cases, Nawanshahr recorded 143 and Kapurthala recorded 101. Doaba is among the top nine districts in the state with the highest cases.

Doaba recorded 49,833 cases of the state’s total 2,05,418 cases so far, while 5,499 of the state’s total 14,366 active cases are from Doaba and 1,594 of total 6,204 deaths were also reported from here.