The doubling rate of coronavirus, which was 58 days in November, has now gone down to 214 days in Rajasthan and the trend indicates that the state is nearing the herd immunity stage, said medical practitioners in the desert state.

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According to senior doctor Virendra Singh: "There were estimates that COVID-19 cases can go up during winters. However, the continuous dwindling of numbers suggests that we are reaching the stage of herd immunity." The corona cases reported in Rajasthan totalled 843 on Sunday, taking the active cases to 11,157. On November 27, 3,093 cases were reported, with active cases totalling 28,183. In fact, the cumulative COVID cases in Rajasthan in the last one week have been limited to around 1,000, confirmed health officials.

Despite the 100 per cent RT-PCR tests being done, the continuous fall in the positivity rate is a good sign, said Siddharth Mahajan, Secretary, Medicine and Health, Rajasthan. In Jaipur, around Diwali, the number of new daily cases had reached 700, which has now reduced to around 140. A similar decline is also visible in other cities of the state. Similarly, the demand for oxygen and ventilators has also gone down significantly in Rajasthan. Only 137 corona patients are admitted as against a capacity of 1,200 beds in RUHS Hospital, he said, adding that the infection rate has reduced to 3.75 per cent in the last one week.

Dr Rajababu Panwar, Vice Chancellor of Rajasthan University of Health Sciences, speaking on the nature of the virus by taking into account the SARS-1, H1N1 and other viruses, said that every virus has a death circle along with its birth circle and after a while the effect of the virus starts decreasing.

The officials were speaking at a review meeting on COVID called by the Chief Minister at his residence. Addressing the officials, the CM said: "This is a good sign that COVID numbers are decreasing. However, till the time COVID goes away completely, we need to work with the same alacrity and adopt all precautions." He said that there is a need to speed up the preparations for vaccination. For this, he instructed for intensive training of medical and other related personnel from state to block level.