Maharashtra sees marginal rise in Covid death rate in February

Maharashtra’s overall Covid death rate rose to 0.46% in February from 0.12% in January this year, the death analysis report provided by the State Covid-19 Death Audit Committee reveals. Similarly, the CFR in Mumbai also rose to 0.41% in February from 0.10% in January. Experts have attributed the increase to the drop in covid-19 cases in Maharashtra due to which the CFR has increased slightly. Officials attributed the marginal increase to declining covid cases statewide and controlling the spread of the virus.

“We have done well in controlling covid cases and deaths in Maharashtra which has led to a drastic drop in the test positivity rate. But if we look at the CFR, there was a marginal increase because there was a sharp drop in covid cases in February compared to January. However, this marginal increase does not make much difference as citizens are now well aware of the current covid status and are getting vaccinated,” said Suresh Kakani, Additional Municipal Commissioner.

According to the data, 1,290 people have succumbed to covid-19 compared to 10,38,810 cases reported in January in Maharashtra, compared to 1,44,596 cases recorded in February, of which 667 people died from the deadly SARS-CoV-3 virus.

Dr Avinash Supe, who heads the Covid death audit committee, said there was no doubt that deaths were much higher in the first wave because the virus was totally new and understanding the new treatment has took time and every day something was changing. But in the second wave, the covid mutation led to deaths and the Delta variant caused severe illness and shortages of oxygen, medicine and beds.

“We have worked to control covid cases and deaths over the three waves and we have achieved our goal and the covid death rate has dropped significantly. After the first wave, we started analyzing covid deaths on a weekly and monthly basis, which helped us come up with new strategies and treatments to reduce deaths. Now, there may be a marginal increase in the overall CFR in February, but the number of deaths reported daily has fallen to single digits in the state,” he said.

However, there was a control of covid cases and deaths during the third wave. Additionally, most of the deaths occurred in the 71-80 age group, as all had heart, sepsis and other comorbidities. According to data received from the state, the CFR above 60 in January-February was 7.70 (179169 and 1381) while in 2020 it was 8.75 (349829 and 30612) and in 2021 , it was 5.70 (788313 and 44943).

Seniors remain the most vulnerable. The 61-70 age group has been hardest hit, contributing 27-30% of deaths across the three waves. Interestingly, the mortality rate was relatively lower in the super senior age group; 20% of deaths were in the 71-80 age group. The CFR of octogenarians was around 7% while that of nonagenarians was less than 1%. The super elders probably ventured out on occasion and therefore mortality or infections were less.

Dr. Mala Kaneria, Infectious Diseases Consultant, Jaslok Hospital and Research Center, said in this

In the third wave of Omicron, an increase in deaths was observed among the elderly, some of whom were fully vaccinated. One of the reasons for this is the presence of associated comorbidities in the elderly, as well as their advanced age which leads to a poor prognosis. “Second, older people do not mount a robust immune response even to two doses of vaccine, due to a physiological decline in immune system function with age and further, regardless of the neutralizing antibodies they manage to develop with vaccination, they decrease.” time, making them vulnerable to a bad outcome,” she said.

Posted: Thursday March 10th 2022, 00:01 IST