Maha Covid toll crosses 13,000; tally now 357,117

Covid-19 deaths in Maharashtra breached the 13,000 mark with the addition of 278 fatalities on Friday, taking the toll to 13,132.

Covid-19 deaths in Maharashtra breached the 13,000 mark with the addition of 278 fatalities on Friday, taking the toll to 13,132.

HT Image

The rise in deaths is becoming a cause for concern for Maharashtra, which leads the country in Covid-19 casualties, too, along with infections. As many as 5,126 deaths have been reported this month, as against 5,638 in June, 2,286 in May, 449 in April and 10 in March, when the first case was reported. It comes to 213 deaths a day on an average. Friday was the 18th day the state reported over 200 deaths.

The state’s case count reached 357,117 after 9,615 infections were recorded on Friday. This has pushed the tally of active cases to 143,714, according to the state health department. Friday was the fourth day the state recorded over 9,000 cases.

Meanwhile, Mumbai has maintained stability in the number of fresh cases and deaths with 1,057 and 54 respectively. Its case count stood at 106,989 with 22,443 active infections, while its toll rose to 5,984. While Mumbai saw the most Covid-19 deaths in the city on Friday, Pune city followed at 49, Pimpri-Chinchwad 17, Mira-Bhayander 16 and Kalyan-Dombivli 13. The state’s case fatality rate (CFR) was recorded at 3.68%, a drop from 4.72% on June 24. It continued to be second-highest in the country after Gujarat where the CFR was 4.29% with 2,252 deaths (52,477 cases) till Thursday.

Dr Om Shrivastava, infectious diseases specialist and member of the 11-member task force appointed by the state government for clinically ill patients, pointed out two reasons behind the deaths — one was delayed treatment and second, some areas may not be fully prepared to fight the pandemic. “Patients having symptoms found to have delayed the treatment, which results in complications, is the first reason behind Covid casualties. We also have to admit that there may be some centres that are not entirely equipped to understand the urgency of the disease,” Dr Shrivastava said.

He, however, stressed that the number of deaths was still among the lowest in the world if compared to the total number of cases. This may be because of immune system, previous vaccination or some other reason that needed to be looked in to. He also said that the Dharavi model of Mumbai needed to be replicated in other parts of the state to contain the spread as well as reduce deaths. Dharavi, once declared as one of the hotspots, is now getting fewer patients and is considered as one of the success stories from the state.

Dr Lancelot Pinto, Mumbai-based pulmonologist and epidemiologist, also found delayed diagnosis and ultimately delayed treatment as one of factors contributing to the death rate. “In Mumbai, we have experienced general practitioners have been preferring CT scan tests (of chest) instead of swab test for Covid-19 as the first medical test. After this, they start their treatment and in many cases patient’s condition deteriorates in the second week or so due to low oxygen level. At that time, they cannot be admitted immediately to a Covid hospital because they have not done Covid test,” he said.

This may be because patients don’t want to get quarantined and want the doctor to treat them accordingly, he said. Another reason, he believed, is the high number of cardiovascular diseases in younger population. “In a paper published in the Journal of Global Health Science (JGHS) sometime back, it was observed that a significant proportion of people in the age group of 50-60 died in India due to Covid-19 as opposed to the rest of the world where it is beyond 60 years,” Dr Pinto said.

To reduce the large number of Covid deaths, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray recently directed the formation of a task-force for clinically ill patients in each and every district of the state. The first such task-force was constituted in Mumbai in April.

On Friday, Thackeray chaired a meeting with members of the task-force from all districts and directed them to work in tandem so that the number of casualties can be brought to zero. He said there has to be proper coordination among members of the task-forces and they should also be taking guidance from the Mumbai-based task force as and when required.

On Thursday, the state government decided to take up an awareness program about the precautions to be taken by people to remain safe.