Of the 9,873 Covid-19 deaths reported from Pune district, 69% have been men

PUNE Of the 9,873 Covid-19 deaths reported from Pune district as of Monday, 69% have been men and the remaining, women

PUNE Of the 9,873 Covid-19 deaths reported from Pune district as of Monday, 69% have been men and the remaining, women.

HT Image

An analysis of the data shows that 82% had an underlying disease, or comorbidity, in addition to the infection.

A higher fatality rate among men has been a mystery to healthcare workers. The highest number of deaths continued to be reported in the 61-70-year group, which has seen 2,936 deaths so far.

Of the 9,873 deaths, 6,815 deaths, or 6,9% were men, while 3,057 were women.

Of these deaths, 8,104 or 82.1% of those who died reported having comorbidities and 1,768 or 17.9% had no comorbidities.

Dr Bhagwan Pawar, district health officer said, “It might be possible that more men are getting infected and so proportionally, deaths among men is rising. However, no medical or biological analysis has been done as to why men are the most affected.”

Since mid-February, the district has been reporting a rise in the number of new Covid19 cases, which is now also resulting in an increase in the number of absolute deaths. Although the CFR has gone down from 0.26% as of March 1-7, to 0.19% as of March 22-28, the absolute numbers for the same period have gone from 30 deaths, to 85 deaths.

The district has been able to audit only 2,132 of its 9,842 total deaths.

A death audit helps to get more information, including period of hospital stay, medication used and the type of comorbidities.

Of the 13,954 currently active patients who are hospitalised in the district, 298 are on ventilators, which is 9.2% of the critical patients; while 2,910 are on oxygen. The rest are on isolation beds without oxygen. As of Monday, the district has a total of 59,003 active patients, of which 23.64% are in hospitals