The COVID-19 death toll in Mumbai crossed the 10,000-mark on Saturday with 50 new deaths reported in the last 24 hours, pushing its count to 10,016. Mumbai now accounts for nearly 8.5 percent of the total deaths in the country and a quarter of those in the state. The city also reported 1,257 new coronavirus cases taking the total count to 2,50,061 so far.
Maharashtra for the seventh consecutive day witnessed a drop in new cases, with 6,417 COVID-19 cases and 137 fatalities being reported on Saturday.
With this, the total number of coronavirus patients in the state rose to 16,38,961 and as many as 43,152 people succumbed to the disease. However the case fatality rate in Mumbai is 4 percent now, down from 5.5 percent in August. However, Maharashtra’s case fatality rate stands at 2.6 percent.
The severity of the pandemic in the metropolis can be judged from the fact that let alone cities, none of the states barring Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have breached the 10,000-mark. Tamil Nadu has recorded 10,891 deaths while 10,872 died in Karnataka due to the disease so far.
The last 1,000 deaths were reported in Mumbai came in just 22 days, while the city had crossed 9,000-mark on October 2. It has the highest fatalities in absolute numbers across the country, but in terms of Case Fatality Rate (CFR) the city stands at second spot with a CFR of 4 percent. Ahmedabad tops the table at 4.6 percent.
Dr Avinash Supe, former dean of KEM Hospital and head of state’s COVID-19 death review committee, said that the mortality rate for the city has dropped from its initial high of 7 percent to 2-3 percent. “However, we continue to see late detection and arrival to hospitals which leave doctors with little time to save lives,” he said, adding the comorbidities combined with age is a bad combination.
Senior officials said they are focusing on casualties and they are also doing regular audits of deaths and found some lapses in the recent audit.
“There is still scope of improving contract tracing and referrals to Covid hospitals as patients are coming late, which can lead to loss of life. We are still working on removing the fear of taking COVID-19 through counselling,” he said.
In terms of caseload, Maharashtra has recorded 249,252 cases in the last 23 days, which is less than the 260,704 cases recorded between August 1 and August 23. “The low count needs to be continued until November. Everything depends upon how things turn out after Dussehra and Diwali festivals,” said another official.
