There has been a 46 per cent drop in Covid deaths in Mumbai over the last 30 days compared to the number of fatalities the month before, reveals data from the civic health department. There were 124 Covid deaths in the city between October 10 and November 9, while between November 10 and December 9, this number was 67. Officials have attributed this to strict measures and the ‘Mission Save Lives’ implemented in the city, because of which severe to mild patients have been tracked and treated in time. However, the overall mortality rate for the city is still 2.1 per cent.
Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani said, they were closely monitoring fatalities. Since the launch of ‘Mission Save Lives’, the death rate has come down to 2.1 per cent and the daily Covid fatality rate had also dropped below 1 per cent. “Our main focus was to reduce the daily number of cases and deaths in the city. For the last one month we have been reporting Covid deaths in single digits and most of the time, it is below five,” he said.
Mumbai’s first case of Covid-19 was recorded on March 11, 2020. From 119 cases and 14 deaths that month, the number of cases jumped to 5,904 in April and the death toll climbed to 431. By the following month, the number of cases had gone up to 33,189 and the death toll touched 2,414, the highest during the first wave. Experts consider the period between March to November 2020 as the first wave. Thereafter, the city experienced some respite. Once again, cases began to climb from the end of February 2021, considered the onset of the second wave.
However, the mortality trend is the opposite of the scenario observed in overall Maharashtra, which recorded more fatalities in the second wave. “The city had developed a protocol which instilled hope among patients and the city’s streamlined system of allocating beds through war rooms, creating massive jumbo facilities with ample oxygen storage helped during the second wave when the number of cases was much higher,” Kakani said.
In March 2020, the fatality rate was 10 per cent -- of the 310 infected patients, 31 died. The following month, the state’s fatality rate stood at 7.67 per cent, which gradually dropped to its lowest, 0.92 per cent in March 2021. But when the second wave reached its peak in April 2021, the fatality rate shot up to 1.68 per cent. For October and November 2021, this number stands at 1.22 per cent and 1.06 per cent respectively. Our cumulative fatality rate since the outbreak in March till date is now 2.12 per cent — the fourth highest in the nation.
Dr Avinash Supe, head, Covid-19 death audit committee, said, “SARS-CoV-2 is a new virus so, scientists and researchers across the globe did not know about its epidemiological characteristics. So, everyone learned through trial and error. Due to the fear of stigma and scepticism, many patients were delaying their hospital admission. In the first wave, around 21,000 patients got admitted after three to six days of the onset of the symptoms. Due to this delay, 50 per cent of the patients died within 48 hours of admission. So, we chalked out the formula — ‘Test, Trace and Treat’. Per infected patients, around 100 close contacts were tested. This helped in early detection and treatment.
“Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) set up the ward war rooms, which helped channelise the availability of beds and ambulances. This helped in timely intervention. There has been a marked decrease in the number of patients as well as deaths in the last 30 days, considering there hasn’t been a significant drop in the testing. The disease is now prevalent only in a few districts in the state. Having said that, vaccination is still inadequate in slums and some other areas. While the government is doing all things possible to spread awareness to eliminate vaccine hesitancy, there is need for more coverage. There is need for a booster dose for people who have completed 10 months of vaccination,” he said.
Also Read: Mumbai reports 192 new COVID-19 cases, 1 death on November 10
source https://www.freepressjournal.in/mumbai/mumbai-city-sees-46-drop-in-covid-19-deaths-124-fatalities-reported-between-october-10-and-november-9
0 comments:
Post a Comment