Covid-19: In top 25, second lowest fatality rate in Noida

NOIDA: With 127 cases in a day, Noida became the 25th city to cross the 2,000-mark on Saturday. But among these 25 cities, it has the second lowest case fatality rate (1.01%), behind only Hyderabad (0.25%). Within NCR, among cities with 500 or more cases, it has the lowest CFR — one death on Saturday took the Covid toll to 21. The national average is 3%.
Of its 2,072 cases now, 915 are active. Noida had reported its first Covid-19 case on March 5. It took 102 days for it to get its first 1,000 cases. The next 1,000 took just 12. On June 15, it surpassed Agra to become the city with the highest number of cases in Uttar Pradesh. So the growth rate has accelerated lately — 55% of all cases in Noida were reported only in the past two weeks and 32% in just the past week.

In fact, over the past three days, Noida has been reporting more than 100 cases every day. But the administration said that has to do with more tests. “There are more cases because we are actively identifying cases now. We have increased testing — we are doing 500 tests a day, the highest in the state … On Saturday, 1,115 samples were collected,” said district magistrate Suhas LY. “Instead of random testing, we are focusing on ILI/SARI patients, high-risk contacts and those in containment zones.”
It may have helped. When neighbouring Delhi had breached the 2,000-mark on April 19, it had a CFR of 2.24%. Mumbai, right behind Delhi in terms of caseload, had a CFR of 5.64% when it crossed 2,000 cases on April 16. And in Gujarat, which has had a high fatality rate since the outbreak began, Ahmedabad had a CFR of 4.29% when it crossed 2,000 cases on April 25.
The DM said the rise in the number of cases has not overwhelmed the system because of the “containment and treatment” strategy. “Two important things are containment and curative action. We have a very high number of containment zones and we are strict when managing them. This helps identify high-risk people. The recovery rate (70%) shows the Covid care system is working.” Ghaziabad, meanwhile, has a high CFR, at 3.75%. On Saturday, it reported 69 more cases to reach 1,333 cases. While three deaths of Covid patients were reported from hospitals in Ghaziabad, the health department did not include them in Saturday’s count.