UP too has high Covid fatality rate

When it comes to death, Delhi has emerged as one of the most favorite hunting grounds for coronavirus across the globe. With a case fatality rate (CFR) of more than 5 per cent, the national Capital is now only behind Poland, Mexico, and Romania on the daily casualty chart. Delhi’s CFR is way above the national average of 1.2 per cent.

While the caseload continued to show a downward trajectory across the country, the rise in CFR is worrisome. On Saturday, Maharashtra too recorded a high CFR of 2.6 per cent. The daily Covid-19 infections dropped further to 34,848 in Maharashtra, while the number of daily deaths surged to 910 in the State.

Delhi’s neighbour Uttar Pradesh also recorded a relatively high case fatality ratio of around 2 per cent. The State logged in a caseload of 12,513 and a death tally of 281 during the last 24 hours.

On Saturday, the national Capital recorded 6,430 new Covid-19 cases and 337 fatalities. This translates into a fatality rate of 5.22 per cent, which is only behind Poland, Romania and Mexico in the global arena and way above the other States in the country.

On Friday, Romania recorded 105 deaths as against 835 fresh Covid-19 cases for a case fatality rate of a whopping 13 per cent. Romania is followed by Poland which has a case fatality rate of 8.76 per cent. The country recorded 3,289 cases and 289 deaths on Friday. Poland is closely followed by Mexico which has a CFR of 8.56 pc (311 deaths and 3,632 cases).

Some of the worst affected nations like the USA and Brazil recorded a CFR of below 3 percent on Friday.

The Delhi abnormally high CFR is by no means a case of aberration. The same trend has persisted for over a week. A week-long calculation shows that the national Capital recorded 88,114 cases between May 7 and 14 with an average of 12,600 per day. During this period, Delhi recorded 2,178 cases. The CFR for the weeks stands 4 plus pc, which is again very high on every count and comparison.

Compared to Delhi, Kerala has the lowest case fatality rate of .5 per cent even though the State is recording high number of cases every day.

The situation in the national Capital is baffling because the state government has resolved the oxygen crisis and also taken steps to ensure that issues related to unavailability of beds don’t come in the way of hospitalisation of any serious patients.

Incidentally, at the peak of the first corona wave in November last year, Delhi had recorded a CFR of around 1.2 per  cent. The national capital recorded 6,746 new Covid-19 cases on November 20, 2020, with the day’s death count of 121. At that time, several experts had claimed that the rise in the death count was due to pollution caused by stubble burning. Now that there has been a near three-fold rise in the CFR, nothing on the surface explains this spike.