Bengaluru's Covid-19 toll rises with 70 new deaths

Bengaluru's death toll climbed up by another 70 fatalities on Thursday even as the burden of the disease reached a new record milestone of 2,344 new cases.

This spike took the city’s total cases to 25,288, of which 18,828 (or 74.4%) are active cases. The death toll is now officially 507.

Over the past three days, details of 186 past deaths have been disclosed, all of which happened several days ago.

According to the data by the Department of Health and Family Welfare, there have been zero deaths since 15 July.

Various citizen volunteer groups on the ground, involved in patient welfare, however, told DH of multiple fatalities happening every day.

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"We don’t know why some of these are not being reported in a timely manner," said a citizen volunteer involved in securing beds for patients, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The existing data shows that 18 of the newly disclosed deaths actually took place on July 3, while 16 took place on July 2.

Of these, seven died at home and another 17 died within hours of being identified as Covid-positive.

Officials maintained that especially in the case of those with late or non-diagnosis of the disease, extra time is required to verify the bulk of the fatalities, many of whom came too late for treatment.

Backlog of deaths

According to the data available so far, the highest number of fatalities registered in a single day was on July 2, when a total of 38 people are confirmed to have died. The next highest total was on the following day when 37 people died.

The figures for these two days could potentially increase in coming days as the Bengaluru Bruhat Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) releases further information from its backlog of fatalities, which according to a source, numbers several hundred.

BBMP Commissioner B H Anil Kumar could not be reached for comment on this backlog.

Meantime, although 92 patients were admitted into private hospitals in the state on Thursday, none was in Bengaluru Urban. There were also no records of patients being admitted into home isolation.

Out of Thursday’s new cases, 1,426 were males and 918 were females. Between them, 715 cases were recorded as being people with symptoms of Influenza-Like Illness and 209 were people with Severe Acute Respiratory Infection.

According to data from the BBMP War Room, no swabs were collected on Thursday. Meantime, the number of containment zones has shot up to 7,053 from 4,616 four days ago.