Covid-19: Cases dip below 1-lakh mark, but fatality rate stays high

Positivity rates have declined sharply, but death rates have risen as infected patients succumb to the virus weeks later

India’s devastating second wave of coronavirus is showing signs of letting up after nearly two months. The number of fresh daily Covid-19 cases on Monday dipped below the 1-lakh mark for the first time since early April, though the impact of the wave is still reflected in the number of deaths from the infection.

Though cases and positivity rate have declined significantly since May, death figures have a built-in lag as many who were infected during the wave are succumbing to the illness weeks later. India’s daily positivity rate had fallen to 4.6 per cent on Monday, a massive drop from late April when every fourth person was testing positive for the disease. On the other hand, the daily case fatality rate — the ratio of deaths to positive cases — continues to climb, reaching 2.5 per cent on Monday, the highest in more than 11 months.

The daily Covid death rate in Delhi, one of the worst hit in the recent wave, shot up to over 15 per cent on Monday as new cases fall and the proportion of deaths increases. The average case fatality ratio this month has been 12.2 per cent, compared with 7 per cent in the same period last month at the height of the second wave.

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Similarly, Uttar Pradesh also saw a daily death rate of 11.7 per cent on Monday, even though the positivity rate has fallen to 0.25 per cent, whereas the state registered a case fatality rate in low single digits for most of April and May.

Uttarakhand, Punjab and Haryana show similar trends, with declining positivity rates but an uptick in death rates. On a cumulative basis, Punjab has the highest case fatality ratio of 2.6 per cent — more than double the country’s 1.2 per cent — while Uttarakhand’s sits at 2 per cent.

Maharashtra too had a relatively high case fatality rate on Monday of 3.3 per cent, though the state's figures have been showing some signs of going down in the recent past. In Karnataka, the death rate stood at 2.8 per cent, but the state’s active cases top the country and may see the death rate tick up in weeks to come.