Despite fall in Covid cases, CFR rises in a week in Pune

There has been an increase in the number of absolute deaths as well which is adding to the rise in CFR

PUNE Despite fall in Covid active cases and new cases in the district, the case fatality rate (CFR) has gone up. Since the past three weeks, the CFR due to the infection has stayed below 0.08%, however, in the last one week, it rose to 0.2%. There has been an increase in the number of absolute deaths as well which is adding to the rise in CFR. The deputy chief minister during the weekly Covid review meet raised the issue as a cause of concern as this could burden the hospital infrastructure.

Despite fall in Covid active cases and new cases in the district, the case fatality rate (CFR) has gone up. (HT FILE PHOTO)

In the week between January 27 and February 2, the district reported 45,788 active Covid cases and 96 deaths which is about 0.2% of the cases reported which is more than the number of deaths reported in the week between January 20 and January 26 when 80 deaths were reported which was about 0.08% when the district had 90,137 active cases which in the previous week stood at 70,617 active cases when the number of deaths reported was about 0.06%.

The week-on-week rise in the number of daily deaths in proportion to the active cases is adding to the bed occupancy in hospitals. While home isolation Covid patients have gone down by 50%, a slight rise in ICU beds was reported in a week when there were 131 patients in ICU beds which this week went up to 203 patients. The rise in new Covid cases in the third and fourth week of January is now resulting in more deaths in the following weeks.

Deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said, “The rising CFR is a cause of concern and the task force is working to understand the reason. There is a definite drop in the number of new cases however there is surely a rise in daily deaths due to the infection not just in the district, but the state and the country. We spoke with task force chiefs as they are trying to understand the reason. In Pune, as comparison to last week, this week the number of active cases had gone down from 90,000 to 42,000 which is 50%.”