Nov Peak: Covid Taking Four Lives Every Hour

Nov Peak: Covid Taking Four Lives Every Hour

However, Positivity Rate Much Lower Than June

Sidhartha.Roy@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:16.11.2020

Novel coronavirus has been claiming nearly four lives in the capital every hour in the past one week. On Sunday, 95 people succumbed to the infection, the third highest single-day toll till date.

This month, 1,103 fatalities have been reported in Delhi in the last fortnight, which means 73.5 deaths every day on average for the last 15 days (three deaths in an hour). In fact, this week has witnessed nearly 90 deaths every day and recorded the highest single-day death toll — 104 — on Thursday and the second highest of 96 on Saturday. The total number of Covid-19 deaths in Delhi stood at 7,614 on Sunday with an overall case fatality rate of 1.5%.

Delhi reported its first Covid-19 case on March 2. That month, two people succumbed to Covid-19 and, in the next, almost two fatalities were reported every day. May saw 414 deaths — 13.3 on average every day — but June, which saw the first major wave of Covid-19, recorded 2,269 fatalities, which amounts to 75.6 deaths on average every day. The death toll dipped to an average of 39.3 a day in July and 15.5 deaths/day in August as the Covid-19 graph dipped.

The number of Covid-19 fatalities, however, started increasing from September, which saw 917 deaths or 30.5 deaths every day on average. This figure rose to 37 deaths daily on average in October.

“We are trying our best to save every life and the best treatment possible is being provided, including plasma therapy. However, in many cases, patients are arriving at hospitals at a stage when their condition has already deteriorated to severe,” said a senior doctor of a Delhi government hospital.

On Sunday, 3,235 fresh cases were recorded in Delhi as only 21,098 tests were carried out in the last 24 hours compared with the nearly 60,000 tests being carried out daily. While nearly 20,000 RT-PCR tests are being carried out daily of late, the number was 9,221 in the last 24 hours, according to the Delhi government’s health bulletin. The positivity rate rose to 15.3% on Sunday compared with 14.7% on Saturday.

The overall positivity rate in November is 12.8%, which is a significant rise from the previous four months. The overall positivity rate in June was 21.1%, including some days when it went beyond 30%. July, however, saw the overall positivity rate dip to 9.6%, which further decreased to 7.1% in August, 7% in September and 6.6% in October even as the number of tests being carried out increased massively.

The total number of positive cases recorded in Delhi till date is more than 4.8 lakh, while more than 4.3 lakh have recovered, putting the recovery rate at 90.1%. The number of active cases on Sunday came down to 39,990 from 44,456 on Saturday, but the number of containment zones increased from 4,288 to 4,358. Out of the total active cases, 27,089 patients are recuperating under home isolation and 8,741 are admitted in hospital.

While 47.5% Covid beds in hospitals are still vacant, the availability of ICU beds reserved for Covid-19 patients is going down with only 164 or 12.2% of total 1,341ICU beds with ventilators available as per the Delhi Corona mobile application.

A DOCTOR SAYS

We are trying our best to save every life... However, in many cases, patients are arriving at hospitals at a stage when their condition has already deteriorated to severe