Rising Covid-19 fatalities another worry for Maharashtra

The case fatality rate (CFR), which has been on the rise since the end of May, has emerged as another cause for concern for Maharashtra, along with the rise in cases.

The case fatality rate (CFR), which has been on the rise since the end of May, has emerged as another cause for concern for Maharashtra, along with the rise in cases. By the end of May, the state had successfully brought down the case fatality rate to 3.26% (on May 26) from 7.41% (with 148 deaths) on April 13.

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On Thursday, the case fatality rate was 4.69%, second highest in the country, after Gujarat where the CFR was 5.99% with 1,735 deaths (28,943 reported cases) till Wednesday. But Maharashtra has highest number of deaths across states in the country.

The state recorded 192 deaths taking toll to 6,931. Of them, 109 deaths were from the past 48 hours, while the rest were from past few days, health officials said. The toll has reached close to the 7,000 mark in only four days, after crossing the 6,000 mark on June 21. In the past five days, the state has recorded as many as 947 deaths. On June 23 and 24, the daily toll was over 200. It also means 46.53% of total deaths in the country are registered in Maharashtra alone. On Thursday, the country’s death toll went up to 14,894.

Officials admit that the rise in CFR is a concern, but insist a lot of deaths are from the past, as they are adding missing fatalities and the situation will be under control soon. Dr Subhash Salunkhe, public health expert, who is also heading state’s communicable diseases prevention control and technical committee, said, “Rising CFR is always a concern, but our case is a bit different as we are also adding missing number of deaths to the tally. This has impacted overall CFR of the state, but it is a temporary phenomenon.”

State health minister Rajesh Tope said they have adopted a patient-centric policy and there is no need to fear. “We have also taken many important measures to reduce CFR such as constitution of a task force, preparing a treatment protocol and providing best available drugs. Today, we have also decided to start conducting rapid antigen tests and ELISA-based antibodies tests which help in gauging prevalence of the epidemic in a containment zone. Antigen tests will also be conducted on frontline workers such as doctors, nurses, ward boys, police etc.,” Tope said.

Last week, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray in a review meeting directed to constitute a task force comprising experts and senior doctors at district or division level to bring down CFR.

The highest-single day toll was recorded with 248 deaths on June 23. Of them, 75 were from last 48 hours while the rest were from the past, clarified the health department.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra recorded 4,841 cases, the highest single-day spike on Thursday. This is the first time the tally of fresh cases crossed the 4,000 mark. With this, Covid-19 count in state has reached 1,47,741. Of them, 63,342 are active cases, according to the data released by state health department.

With the state officials expecting a peak in July, the number of fresh cases is also likely to rise and situation may become more difficult in the coming days. On Wednesday, the state had reported the highest single-day spike then of 3,890 cases. It was also the 15th day when the state reported over 3000 cases in a day.

Last week, state health minister Rajesh Tope said the peak has started. He said over 77,000 patients have recovered and discharged from various hospitals across Maharashtra. Of the 63,342 patients, 80% are asymptomatic, 10-15% have symptoms and only 4-5% patients have severe conditions.

“The doubling rate has improved to 30 days, which is a parameter to determine the situation. In countries such as the US, UK, Spain France etc. cases per million are between 4,000 and 6000, whereas in Maharashtra, it is 1200 per million. While deaths per million in foreign countries are between 400 and 600, the number is 60 in the state,” the health minister said.

The health minister also informed the state cabinet has decided to request the central government to postpone exams (due in August) of post-graduate medical students or promote them based on internal assessment as if they went for studies then the state will face a shortage of doctors in hospitals. They have also requested the health ministry to consider MBBS doctors’ service in hospitals as internship and also postpone NEET exams for medical students. A resolution was passed in the state cabinet meeting on Thursday.

In the past two days, 7822 patients have recovered which has improved the recovery rate. On Thursday, 3661 patients recovered, while on Wednesday, the number was 4161. With this, the recovery rate has reached 52.42% On June 22, it slipped to 49.86% from 50.99% on June 16. The total number of recovered patients is 77,453.

The health department said they have conducted 8,48,026 tests, of which 7,00,285 tested negative.