Daily Covid-19 deaths cross 1,000 after six months, Madhya Pradesh among the top five states

After six months, India on Wednesday once again recorded more than 1,000 new Covid-19 deaths as the daily Covid-19 count ballooned to over 1.84 lakh fresh cases in the same period.

Out of 1,027 Covid-19 deaths reported in the previous 24 hours, Maharashtra accounted for 281 fatalities followed by Chhattisgarh (156) and Uttar Pradesh (85).

The last time India reported more than 1,000 daily Covid-19 deaths was on October 17 but for two weeks prior to that day, there was not a single instance of such a heavy toll, which used to be reported in September, 2020 when the first wave of Covid-19 was at its peak.

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“The gains from the hard lockdown a year ago have been wasted through complacency and poor science. We need to realize that the only exit strategy is through mass vaccination and until sufficient coverage is reached, masking must continue and we have to avoid public spaces to the extent possible,” Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, Washington DC told DH.

Public health experts earlier warned that even with a low case fatality of 1.25 per cent, India would encounter more than one thousand daily deaths if the number of Covid-19 cases went through the roof. This is exactly what has been seen all over the country in the last ten days.

“Even when the case fatality rate remains low, the absolute count can keep rising as a proportion of the increasing number of cases. The sudden surge in cases will put a strain on the existing shortage in critical care capacity, resulting in higher deaths,” observed Giridhar Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India.

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One of the key differences between the first wave in September and the ongoing second wave is faster rate of spread in the second surge. "The increase from 10,000 to 80,000 new cases per day from February to April has taken less than 40 days. In September, this journey took 83 days," the Lancet Covid-19 Commission, India Task Force says in a report.

A fresh worry is shooting up the cases in yet another large populous state, Madhya Pradesh, which is now among the top five states with the maximum caseload. Madhya Pradesh recorded its highest single-day spike in Covid-19 infections with 8,998 cases on Wednesday. The caseload has increased by more than four times in the last two weeks.

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Other states reporting sharp rises are Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal. “The current R value (reproduction number that marks the SARS-CoV-2’s ability to spread) in MP is 1.57. I am more concerned about the surge in cases and deaths in states with higher R values: UP (2.8), Bihar (3) and over 2 in Rajasthan, West Bengal and Telangana, Jharkhand, Odisha and Delhi,” Babu added.