Mortality, positivity rates drop in Jharkhand, experts say lockdown helped

RANCHI: Jharkhand has emerged as one of those states which has been able to reduce its mortality and positivity rates by the fourth week of May. Experts are of the opinion that stricter lockdown, herd immunity, awareness, appropriate Covid-19 behaviour and early medication are the key reasons behind the better results.
As per state health department records, Jharkhand’s positivity rate reduced to 4.08% from 13.11% in the last one month. As per data, the positivity rate during April 19-April 25 was 13.11% which increased to 15.85% during April 26-May 2 and then dived to 12.09% during May 3-May9 and 7.09% between May 10 and May 16.
The mortality came down as the number of deaths reported between May 12 and May 16 stood at 394 which came down to 281 in the last five days, including 46 deaths on May 21.
Talking to TOI, professor of critical care and head, Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences’ (Rims) trauma centre Dr Pradip Bhattacharya said, “The mortality rate is always proportional to the number of admission of critically-ill patients and we have reported a 20% dip in admissions in our ICU. If we talk about deaths at Rims alone, we used to witness 20 deaths on a daily basis till last week which came down to four or five by Thursday.”
On being asked what are the possible reasons which reduced the figures, Bhattacharya said, “During the second wave, people became more aware about the virus and got themselves tested which helped them in managing the infection in the initial stage itself and that is a major reason which has contributed in the reduction of critical patients.”
Meanwhile, public health expert and professor of preventive and social medicine at Rims, Dr Dewesh Kumar said, “Stricter lockdown and development of herd immunity has played a very important role in the reduction of positivity rate as well as mortality. Currently, there are more than 19,000 people who are asymptomatic and we only have around 5,000 people who are symptomatic which validates it.”