On a day the H1N1 toll mounted to 36,experts said there were signs that the first wave of the pandemic in India is past its peak. On the basis of figures collated at the H1N1 screening centre of RML Hospital,its Medical Superintendent Dr NK Chaturvedi said the patients footfall had drastically decreased in the last two weeks. We have seen a significant decrease in patient inflow at our screening centre and can say the first wave is more or less over, he said. The hospital,which was screening nearly 800 patients daily,is now getting only 200 to 220 patients a day. The average number of samples has also gone down: two weeks ago it was 150,now the figure is 12 to 20,said Chaturvedi. The Director General of Indian Council of Medical Research,VM Katoch,maintained it was too early to comment about the pandemic. Considering the size of our population,we cannot even say this was a wave. The population-case ratio is very small. We cannot say the pandemic is over without a detailed research.
