Assam's cumulative Covid-19 count crosses one-lakh mark

GUWAHATI: Assam’s cumulative Covid-19 count crossed the one lakh mark on Friday, five months after the first case was reported in Silchar. While 80% of them have already recovered, the number of active patients slipping into critical condition requiring oxygen support has increased over the period.
Statistics show that even as the cumulative count of positive cases reached 1,01,367 on Friday, the doubling time of spread of the virus has considerably slowed down to 23 days.
The state’s daily positivity rate in relation to number of tests conducted has marginally increased from 4% to 6% in last 15 days but is still below the critical threshold of 10%. The mortality rate, though still the lowest in the country, has also marginally increased from 0.24% to 0.28% in last 15 days which has taken the death toll to 286 on Friday.
About 2500 positive cases on an average are being reported daily with the exception of over 4,000 cases on August 12 and about 2700 cases on August 17.
Assam health minister Himanta Biswa sarma said on Saturday, “As on Saturday 433 patients are on oxygen support and that is not at all a good sign at all.” Among them 152 are in Guwahati alone.
The increasing number of patients needing oxygen support is now a major concern for the health department in terms of growing severity of the pandemic and increasing demand for oxygen.
“If more people become critical and require oxygen support, very soon we will run short of oxygen and may have to export oxygen from West Bengal and Jharkhand. Our oxygen producing capacity in government and private sector here is limited,” Sarma said.
He said that in July the daily oxygen consumption in Covid hospitals was 5 MT, which has increased to 8.25MT per day in August.
“The total daily oxygen consumption by Covid and non-Covid patients is 25 MT while the daily production of oxygen is 37 MT. We still have a buffer but if people are not careful, we may soon run into oxygen shortage,” Sarma said.
Sarma said that 707 patients have been undergone plasma therapy so far while 1350 patients have been administered Remdesivir. “In Assam we have seen 95% success rate in plasma therapy when introduced at an early stage of infection,” he added.