Covid-19: After a lull, Maharashtra back in dubious top spot with highest daily deaths

MUMBAI: Maharashtra on Sunday once again became the highest contributor to daily Covid-19 deaths in the country after losing that dubious spot to Delhi and West Bengal on several days in December.
On Sunday, Maharashtra with 70 deaths was at the top followed by West Bengal with 47 and Delhi 33, according to union health ministry data. A total of 336 deaths were recorded in the country.While the country’s case fatality rate is 1.4%, Maharashtra’s continues to be 2.5%.

On December 1, Delhi passed Maharashtra to record the highest deaths in a 24-hour window. The national capital had 108 while Maharashtra had 80. On December 8, Maharashtra had, in fact, dropped to the third position with Delhi and West Bengal contributing 63 and 48 deaths respectively compared to the state's 40. On December 9 too, Delhi had surpassed the state to report the highest deaths in the country.
Interestingly, Kerala that has been reporting the highest new daily detections has managed to keep deaths under control. It has been reporting between 29-35 deaths in December and held on to fourth position in the daily mortality chart.

Kerala also has the second highest active caseload after Maharashtra while West Bengal has the third highest. Punjab and Haryana are the two other states regularly featuring on the list of top five states with highest daily Covid deaths.

Maharashtra officials defended the state's numbers and said its death graph was steadily declining. In December, the state reported an average 80 deaths every day, highest being 127 on December 4 and lowest 40 on December 6 as well as December 7. Compared to this, average daily deaths in the first two weeks of November were 115.
At its peak, the state had seen up to 400 deaths in a day, said state surveillance officer Dr Pradeep Awate. According to him, the state is effectively recording 30-50 deaths daily, but official toll is usually higher due to addition of previous unrecorded deaths. “There is also the factor of transparency and labelling. We termed the deaths of chronic patients, including cases of cancer, kidney and heart disease, as Covid deaths if they tested positive. Many other states don’t consider them as Covid deaths,” Dr Awate said. He said of the 48,269 fatalities in Maharashtra, over 80% had some comorbidity.
Former KEM dean Dr Avinash Supe, who heads the death audit committee for Mumbai circle, said the death rates are fairly under control. Mumbai, for instance, is the worst hit in the state and has a death rate of 1.8% now, he said. “We saw almost 4,700 cases but about 70 deaths. Given the burden of co-morbidity in our population, this number is not too grave,” he said.