Vidarbha records 300th Covid-19 case, 48 days after first one

Chaitanya Deshpande | TNN | Apr 30, 2020, 04:35 IST

Nagpur: Vidarbha recorded 300 confirmed Covid-19 positive cases on Wednesday. Interestingly, 222 of these 300 are in Nagpur and Yavatmal districts, with 174 of them recorded in the last ten days — between April 19 and 29. First case in Vidarbha was reported on March 11, and 300th case on April 29, the 48th day of the pandemic in the region.
Of these 300 cases, only 21 were recorded in March, between March 11 and 31. Rest 277 were recorded from April 1 to April 29.
Even in April, only 50 cases came to fore between April 1 and 9. In the next ten days, between April 10 and 19, total 68 cases were registered. The last 10 days of April — between April 20 and 29 — registered a total of 161 cases. This means, Vidarbha moved towards the peak of Covid-19 during the last 10 days of April.
Highest number of 42 confirmed positive cases were recorded on April 25. After this, the number of confirmed cases has constantly coming down. If we refer to the general graph of Covid-19 cases worldwide, this happens after the peak. Statistically, if we consider 42 cases on April 25 as the peak, the number of cases will go down from here onwards. On April 29, only six new cases were found in the region, which signals the same.
“Statistical study of Covid-19 graph worldwide shows similar movement. It would be early to predict, but the present development of Vidarbha’s curve is moving towards flattening,” said microbiologist Dr Ankush Mohod.
Another important feature of Vidarbha’s Covid-19 trend is low mortality rate and high recovery rate of patients. Till date, 11 deaths have been registered so far, but only one of the deceased was in isolation ward, that too on April 29. Earlier, all 10 deceased were detected positive after their death in either non-Covid ward or in Covid hospital as suspects, and not confirmed cases.
Initial observation of doctors is that the mortality rate depends on virus strain. “Mortality rate varies as per the strain of novel coronavirus. As per known studies, there are several strains of this virus. Two known strains are S-strain and L-strain. Out of these, L-strain is considered as more dangerous,” said Dr Milind Bhrushundi, an expert on viral diseases.
Recovery rate of Vidarbha is 27.33%, which is way higher than Maharashtra state (14.4%) and also more than the national rate (23.3%). This is due to the fact that more than 85% patients here are asymptomatic. Many of them are young and below 50 years of age. Recovery rate of young patients has been high worldwide.