chandigarh after a long haul the fortnightly covid19 positivity rate in punjab has come down to 056 the lowest since january after shooting up to high of 20 during the peak of the second wavethe weekly positivity rate till last week of january was recorded at 090 and it started to rise from the midfebruary and remained much above the 5 limit fixed by the world health organisation who till mayendafter the second wave subsided the positivity rate fell below the 5 mark for the first time in the first week of june and dropped below 1 on july 6as per the data of the state health department there are only six districts ferozepur 14 mohali 13 mansa 12 bathinda 11 moga 1 and faridkot 1 having a positivity rate of 1 or a little over 1 while seven districts have positivity rate below the states averageduring the peak of the massive second wave that had rattled the state the positivity rate of all the districts had crossed the doublefigure markthe percentage of people testing positive for the virus remains higher in the urban areas against the rural positivity rate of 031 048 of the people tested were found infected in urban areas as of july 6 barnala had the highest urban positivity rate of 526 while in mohali 244 of people tested were found covidpositiveafter maintaining a high testing rate through the peak of the second wave there has been a notable drop in the number of tests being conducted in the state the sevenday average of tests per million population was 1751 on june 24 the fifth highest in the country which has come down to 1453 as on july 6 the states testing figures though continue to remain above the national average of 1422 tests per millionpunjab covid19 nodal officer dr rajesh bhaskar attributed the drop in number of cases and positivity rate to the containment and management efforts put in by the government since the beginning of the second wave special focus was given on testing extensive level iv contact tracing and timely isolation and treatment of infected patients he addedno large containment zoneas there has been a substantial drop in the number of fresh cases the count of containment zones has also come down indicating that the spread of covid19 has slowed down in the state at present there are no large containment zones in the state while the number of micro containment zones areas having 5 to 14 cases has come down to two which during the peak had crossed 200