Maharashtra's Covid death rate low despite case rise

PUNE: Covid-19's case fatality rate (CFR) in the state, despite the recent surge in caseload, has declined over the last five months, a recent report by the Covid death audit committee stated.
Average CFR for the first five months of the year was 0.2%, with May registering just 0.05% CFR.
Dr Avinash Supe, who heads the death audit committee, said Maharashtra is seeing "a declining trend" in CFR, which is evident in the data from May. He said even though cases have surged in the state, hospitalisations have been low and a substantial chunk of deaths were actually caused by other health issues in patients, not Covid.
Dr Supe said most of these patients were also incidental admissions - people who tested positive during routine screening before another procedure.
"Most were admitted for other critical conditions and they incidentally tested positive for Covid," he said, while explaining recent deaths at hospitals in some parts of the state (mainly in Mumbai).
The current weekly CFR is around 0.3%.
"Fewer people are coming in with breathlessness, pneumonia and dying of classical complications of Covid," a health official said.
State task force member Dr Rahul Pandit said most new cases mainly involve mild symptoms or asymptomatic Covid. He, however, said masks are important, considering how fast new variants of the virus can spread.