In the past month, Maharashtra Covid-19 mortality rate has fallen from 4.76% to 3.49%, as of Thursday, according to the data from the Maharashtra Health Department.
However, during the same period, the number of deaths went up drastically to 1,454 on Thursday, from 269 deaths on April 22.
On April 22, the total number of Covid-19 cases in the state was 5,649, with a mortality rate of 4.76%. On May 21, the total number of cases in the state was 41,642, with a mortality rate of 3.49%.
As of Saturday, the total number of Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra stood at 44,582, and the number of deaths was 1,517, which resulted in a mortality rate of 3.40%. However, the analysis of Saturday’s data is yet to be released by the Maharashtra government.
The mortality rate in Maharashtra has steadily dropped for the past one month. According to the state health department’s data, the mortality rate was 4.76% on April 22, 4.24% on April 26, 4.37% on April 30, 4.22% on May 1, 3.85% on May 9, 3.7% on May 14, 3.62% on May 16 and 3.49% on May 21.
The number of tests during this period also went up from around 89,000 on April 22 to 3.22 lakh tests as of Saturday.
Madhav Sathe, a former microbiologist at Nair Hospital, said, “The mortality rate going down despite the deaths going up is actually a good thing. The total number of tests and positive cases have also increased.”
Sathe added, “The more the virus spreads, the less dangerous it will get. So, it will spread more than what we have now, but it will get less severe. Also, mortality rate going down is also because of early detection, with medical experiments yielding positive results. I assume that in the coming days, though cases will go up, the mortality rate will remain the same or come down slightly.”
Data from the state medical education and drugs department has revealed that 86.74% of the state’s 39,144 Covid-19 patients are below the age of 60. The department has analysed data till May 20.
Of these patients, 3.61% cases are of people up to 10 years, 7.05% are between 11 and 20 years, 21.08% are between 21 and 30 years, 21.44% are between 31 and 40 years, 17.76% are between 41 and 50 years, and 15.80% are between 51 and 60 years.
However, highlighting that people in the 50-plus age group are most vulnerable to the disease, the department put the number of fatalities in this age group at 71% of the 998 deaths.
State health department officials said measures to isolate and treat people who are over the age of 60 with comorbidities, have helped keep them from contracting the disease.
Maharashtra has clocked more than 2,000 new infections every day for the past six days, recording 14,042 new cases and 382 deaths. The state has witnessed a significant rise in Covid-19 cases since May 6, when it started reporting more than 1,000 cases daily.
The health department officials, however, said the state has not reached the community transmission stage yet as the growth in cases is not exponential.
Meanwhile, more than 300,000 migrant labourers from Konkan division alone returned to their home states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan by Shramik Special trains. The Konkan division includes Thane, Mumbai, Raigad, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg and Palghar districts.
