‘TN among 5 high-burden states showing decline in daily cases’
Health Ministry Data Shows State Saw Almost 24% Dip In Avg No. Of Cases

Sushmi.Dey@timesgroup.com

New Delhi: 04.09.2020

While active cases of Covid-19 are rising on a daily basis led by rapidly rising positive cases across the country, the health ministry data shows that the trajectory of average daily active cases in the five high-burden states have declined during the last week (August 27-September 2), as compared to the week of August 13-19.

Five high-burden states — Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu — account for 62% of active cases in the country. The data also shows that Tamil Nadu saw an almost 24% decrease in average number of daily active cases during August 27-September 2 as compared to August 13-19. In Maharashtra, it dropped by 6.8%. UP, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh also showed a decline by around 17%, 16% and 13.7% respectively. However, Maharashtra has recorded high numbers on a daily basis and has a worrying positivity rate that hovers around 20%.

There have been fluctuations in the week of August 20-26 where the number has gone up as compared to the August 13-19 week, but over all, in the three week period, the states have registered a decline.

Overall, active cases across the country are increasing consistently despite high number of recoveries on a daily basis. On Wednesday, 68,584 Covid-19 patients were discharged from either home isolation or hospital taking the total number of recoveries to nearly 30 lakh. Despite this, the active case-load of the country stood at 8,15,538, up from 8,01,282 a day ago. Not too long ago, the number was in the 7 lakh region.

In case of deaths, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi and Tamil Nadu account for 70% of the total Covid-19 deaths in the country. However, only Karnataka and Delhi saw a surge week-on-week between these three weeks. “On a week-to-week basis, there has been 4.5% decrease in average daily deaths reported in Andhra Pradesh, 11.5% decline in Maharashtra and 18.2% decline in Tamil Nadu. On the other hand, Delhi has seen 50% and Karnataka 9.6% increase in average daily fatalities,” he said.

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