Maharashtra, on Friday, reconciled its COVID-19 fatality data at 2,619, the highest so far. The total death toll now stands at 1,06,367. However, 406 people succumbed to the deadly virus across the state in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, the state also reported 11,766 new cases, pushing its tally to 58,87,853 cases so far.
With the rise in COVID-19 deaths, the case fatality rate (CFR) has also gone up. Between June 1 and June 10, it was at 2.22%, up from 1.80% in May and 0.77% in April, according to the state Health Department.
Mumbai witnessed a marginal rise in the daily COVID-19 cases on Friday. 696 new cases and 24 fatalities were reported in the last 24 hours. The total count now stands at 7,15,146 with 15,146 deaths so far. Meanwhile, the doubling rate has increased to 598 days and the recovery rate has touched 95 per cent. 6,81,947 patients have recovered and were discharged across the city till now.
Public health experts attributed the reconciliation process to two factors. First, the time-consuming process of fact-based categorisation of deaths as COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 as per the rules laid down by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Second, the shortage of manpower and other resources during the more infectious and deadly second wave that led to delays in updating data on the centralised portal.
Dr Avinash Supe, chairman of the state’s death audit committee said, “Just because a patient has been diagnosed with COVID-19, doesn’t mean the cause of death is the virus. If a patient has severe comorbidities like chronic kidney disease or has recently undergone organ transplantation that has compromised the immunity, we have to check all medical reports of the patient before declaring it a COVID-19 death. We have to categorise such deaths by following the scientific parameters laid down by ICMR and the World Health Organisation (WHO). This process often takes between six to eight days.”
