Pune: The city has a COVID-19 case fatality ratio of 2.51 per cent, a bit higher than the national average of 2.41 per cent, which is a cause of concern for the district administration. Officials have set a target to reduce this ratio below 1 per cent as per the Indian Council of Medical Research guidelines, which seems like an uphill task for now. The only respite for administration has been that 59.17 per cent recovery rate of patients in the city.

Saurabh Rao, a special officer at the Divisional Commissioner said, "We have to cover a long distance as far as the case fatality ratio is concerned. Pune city has a case fatality ratio of 2.5 per cent while the entire district region has this rate at 2.35 per cent. The death rate for the Mumbai region is 5.61 per cent and for the entire state, it is about 3.75 per cent. So Pune city and district area is faring better as compared to the Mumbai region or Maharashtra state but is a bit above the national average of 2.41 per cent."

"According to the ICMR guidelines, we have set a target to bring down the death rate below 1 per cent. We will have to take enormous efforts for this to happen, but that will be a real success for us," Rao added.

Rao also said that they had estimated around 27,000 active cases by the July month-end and out of those about 3,000 would require hospitalisation.

As of July 22, Pune city has a total of 17053 active COVID-19 cases and from those 589 cases are such that the patient is in critical condition. The ventilator, ICU and oxygenated bed capacity augmentation has become a big challenge for the district and civic administrations as patients and their relatives are finding it difficult to find these hospital beds vacant in the private and civic hospitals of the city.

Currently, the COVID-19 related deaths in the city stand at 

June 25 to July 1 ----------------------- 2.6 %
July 16 to 21. ------------------------------- 1.4 %