E-Paper
CFR for Pune city slightly higher than district
PUNE The case fatality rate (CFR) for Pune city concerning Covid-19 fatalities, is higher than the CFR for Pune district by a small margin
PUNE The case fatality rate (CFR) for Pune city concerning Covid-19 fatalities, is higher than the CFR for Pune district by a small margin.
For the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), the CFR, as per authorities, it is 1.80 per cent, whereas for Pune district it is 1.70 per cent.
Case Fatality Rate (CFR) measures the severity of a particular disease by defining the total number of deaths as a proportion of reported cases of a specific disease at a specific time.
As cases have reduced in the city, Pune has seen a drop in CFR.
For Maharashtra, the CFR is around 2.01 per cent as of Sunday.
Speaking about the CFR in PMC limits, Dr Sanjeev Wavare, assistant chief of the health department at the PMC, said that many Covid patients who are moderate or critical, tend to come to the city for treatment.
“Many patients come to Pune city for better medical treatment. As the city has better infrastructure, there is more inflow of moderate to severe Covid patients from nearby districts. This may be one of the reasons for the CFR being higher than that of Pune district,” said Dr Wavare.
Dr Dnyaneshwar Mote, member of the Pune city Covid task force for Social Action said that there can be two reasons.
“One is that more patients come to city for better medical infrastructure. Second is that there is comparatively less testing for patients at the early stage. Due to this, many patients who are asymptomatic or show symptoms later,” said Dr Mote.
He added that those cases are detected, but the cases which haven’t been tested yet are more.
“So many positive cases are not recorded as complete contact tracing is not done in the city due to various reasons. And so there are more cases which are critical. There are more cases in the background which are not seen as many moderate or mild cases are not tested,” said Dr Mote.
He added that in rural area, testing is more so more cases are seen.
“Earlier, we saw that in the slum area, many Covid patients have already tested positive and recovered. And so mostly critical or moderate cases are detected and reflected and so the CFR is high,” said Dr Mote.
He added that people who were in immediate contact of a positive patient or patients with flu-like symptoms, should get tested immediately.
“Early detection will help these patients to remain mild or moderate and not get critical. If detected in the first stage, the recovery rate will improve and deaths will definitely reduce. The key is to increase awareness and reduce hesitancy. There should be more awareness among family doctors as they see many patients. This will help reduce hospitalisation as well,” said Dr Mote.
He further emphasised that vaccination of the population will help to reduce CFR.
“Government as well as private hospitals should be ready, infrastructure-wise, for the third wave to save more lives,” said Dr Mote.
