Karnataka: Discharges pick up, 6 lakh+ active cases a concern

BENGALURU: As anticipated, discharge of Covid patients from hospitals in Karnataka has gained pace in the past two weeks compared to the previous two weeks, but the recovery rate continues to remain underwhelming leaving several questions unanswered.
From under 50,000 in the week between April 18 and 24 — given that cases in March were low — discharges jumped to 73,496 in the next seven days. From there, they went up to nearly 1.8 lakh between May 2 and 8, and the past week saw more than 2.2 lakh discharges.

As of May 15, Karnataka had more than 15.4 lakh discharges, while more than 6 lakh patients were still active. Only Maharashtra, whose active caseload touched 6.9 lakh on April 21, had more such cases. Compared with Karnataka, Maharashtra has over 30 lakh more total infections, indicating the magnitude of active cases in Karnataka.
Gap between projection, actual active cases rising

As of May 15, active cases in Maharashtra had slipped below 5 lakh and Karnataka had the highest number of such cases in the country.
In a written submission to the Karnataka high court on May 12, the gover nment estimated that active cases would be around 5.7 lakh and projected an oxygen need of 1,358KL. However, active cases were over 30,000 more than this projection.
The gap between projection and actual active cases has been increasing: The state had estimated active cases would be 5.8 lakh on May 13, but the number was 5.93 lakh; for May 14, the numbers were 5.78 lakh and 5.98 lakh.
As experts have pointed out, the high active cases’ burden would have a direct impact on the number of deaths.
Given that it takes between 10 and 14 days for a patient to recover and get discharged, excluding a fraction of them who are critical, discharges in the past week should have matched the fresh cases in the last week of April.
In the last week of April, the state added nearly 2.6 lakh cases, but the May 9-15 week has seen only 2.25 lakh discharges. The gap between fresh cases and discharges is around 30,000.
Even if 5,000 deaths seen in the said week are factored in as patients from the last week of April — given that deaths have typically occurred in the second week of infection — the gap between fresh cases and discharges still appears to be 25,000. These could be cases who are taking longer than 14 days for recovery.
Additional chief secretary Jawaid Akhtar, health commissioner Dr KV Trilok Chandra, health minister K Sudhakar, Covid task force chairman and deputy CM CN Ashwanth Narayan did not comment despite TOI’s repeated attempts to reach out to them.