Why are Covid-19 deaths increasing despite case dip?

Experts said that deaths generally lag two to three weeks behind cases, as severe infections and treatment precede deaths

While the active caseload has reported a marginal decline in India, the country is seeing a surge in deaths due to Covid-19.

A week ago, on January 26, India reported 2,85,914 fresh cases and 665 deaths in 24 hours. Since then, there has been a constant dip in new infections. However, the number of deaths has risen steadily. On February 3, the country recorded 1,72,433 infections and 1,008 deaths over the past 24 hours.

"Deaths lag about two to three weeks behind cases. It takes that much time for people to be severely ill, hospitalised and managed there till they succumb to the disease," Shahid Jameel, Visiting Professor, Ashoka University, told IANS.

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India is currently going through its third Covid-19 wave, triggered mostly by the highly contagious Omicron variant. Globally, Omicron accounts for about 70 per cent of the infections at present, with the Delta variant accounting for about 30 per cent.

Omicron, believed to be majorly causing mild illness, had initially led to a spike in Covid-19 case numbers, but the number of Omicron cases has been relatively less in India.

"The third wave in India is also mostly driven by Omicron. The Omicron figures are much less than daily positive cases because the former is determined only after genomic sequencing, whereas the latter is based on PCR and rapid tests," said Jameel, who is also a Senior Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford University.

"Not all positive cases are sequenced to determine the variant," he said.

India is expected to see a peak in the wave in early to mid-February. "The peak will differ in different states and should eventually start to flatten by the end of March," Dr Kiran G Kulirankal, of Division of Infectious Diseases at Amrita Hospital, Kochi, told IANS.

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However, it is too early to predict the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.

Kulirankal contended that although initial data shows the Omicron variant to be highly transmissible but less severe than Delta, such is not the case among high-risk groups.

It comprises the elderly, immunocompromised, patients with chronic kidney disease, chronic liver disease, uncontrolled diabetes, those on immunosuppressive medications and patients with malignancy. "The weakened immune system fails to prevent the progression of the disease to its severe form leading to increased morbidity and mortality," Kulirankal said.

He advised protecting the high-risk groups as well as the general population with vaccinations and following proper Covid-19 protocols, such as hand washing, avoiding unnecessary travels, avoiding public gathering, and maintaining physical distancing.

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