20 more: Delhi logs highest single-day jump in fatalities

Of the 20 deaths that were recorded in the daily health bulletin, 15 took place in Dr Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital, but none of these are from the previous 24 hours.

With 20 more deaths from the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) reported on Wednesday, Delhi registered the highest single-day increase of Covid-19 fatalities for the second consecutive day. The death toll from the pandemic in the national capital stands at 106.

Medical professionals attend to a suspected COVID-19 patient, in Institute of Liver and Biliary Science (ILBS) hospital, New Delhi, India.(Biplov Bhuyan/HT PHOTO)

Of the 20 deaths that were recorded in the daily health bulletin, 15 took place in Dr Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital, but none of these are from the previous 24 hours. “All the deaths in the health bulletin today are from before 24 hours. No fresh deaths have been recorded from RML today,” said Dr Minakshi Bhardwaj, medical superintendent of RML Hospital.

With a total of 41 deaths, according to the Delhi government data, RML accounts for almost half of the 86 deaths that have been reported in the ten designated Covid-19 hospitals so far.

Delhi reported 13 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday.

After a discrepancy in the deaths reported in the daily bulletin and those in hospitals were reported in the media, Delhi chief secretary Vijay Dev issued an order on Monday, asking all hospitals to report their deaths in a time-bound manner. This required all hospitals to send in their death reports, or ‘Nil’ (no deaths recorded) reports, by 5pm every day. Following this, a three-member death audit committee set up by the government would meet to review the numbers.

“Most of the deaths that have been recorded today and yesterday are from the backlog that hadn’t been cleared. With the new standard operating procedures (SOP) in place, the earlier records of patients who had died have started coming from hospitals. The backlog should be cleared within the week, after which there won’t be such unusual spikes in numbers,” said a senior official from the Delhi government, on condition of anonymity.

It is likely that the backlog will continue to be cleared over the next few days.

Even with the sudden spike in deaths, Delhi’s mortality rate continues to be a just a little above 1%, against the national average of 3.1%

Of the deaths recorded so far, almost 55% people were 60 or older and nearly 87% had comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, heart or kidney disease.

On Wednesday, Delhi recorded 359 new cases of Covid-19, taking the city’s tally to just two short of 8,000. At the same time, 346 people across the city recovered from the viral infection, improving the city’s recovery rate.

With 2,858 people having recovered from the infection since it was first detected in the city on March 2, the recovery rate of Delhi stands at almost 36%. The national recovery rate currently stands at about 33%.

Of the 5,034 active cases in the city, 1,634 are admitted to the Covid-19 hospitals with severe symptoms. Of them, 114 are in the intensive care unit with 14 people on ventilator. Delhi has about 306 ventilators in government hospitals and another 800 in private sector ones.

Another 1,055 people with mild to moderate symptoms are admitted to the Covid Care Centres or Covid Health Centres. And, 1,113 Covid-19 positive people who are pre-symptomatic or have mild symptoms have been placed in home isolation across the city.