Updated: September 3, 2020 2:46:36 pm
A health worker wearing personal protective equipment transfers a patient from an ambulance to the Ludhiana Civil Hospital. (Express photo: Gurmeet Singh)
Coronavirus cases in India: Six times in the last ten days, the number of coronavirus-related deaths in the country has exceeded 1,000, indicating that this would now be the new normal.
Apart from Maharashtra, which continues to report the maximum number of deaths per day, large numbers of deaths are reported in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and increasingly in Punjab, which has relatively fewer infected people.
On Wednesday, Punjab reported more than 100 deaths for the first time. Before this, it had reported between 40 and 60 deaths per day, which is also relatively high for states with a comparable number of infected people. Punjab has around 57,000 confirmed infections and 15,000 active cases.
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Kerala, Gujarat, Odisha and Assam have a higher number of confirmed infections, most of them also have a higher number of active cases, but their daily death count has been between 20 and 30 years, or even less.
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The Punjab government has said that the highest number of deaths is due to a late diagnosis because people avoided going to the doctor until the situation worsened.
“Up to 67 percent of all Covid deaths were due to patients who came to the health center for the first time after suffering severe signs and symptoms … these cases then become difficult to manage and lead to death,” said the state health minister, Balbir Singh Sidhu. said.
“Even symptomatic people with comorbidities have not reported to health centers until the disease worsens. This is why the maximum number of deaths from Covid occurs among patients with comorbid conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, heart and kidney disease … more than 50 percent of deaths from Covid in the state have been among diabetics ” Sidhu said.
He said that part of people’s reluctance to visit health centers and get tested was the result of fear propaganda and false propaganda.
Maharashtra has reported between 300 and 400 deaths per day, sometimes even more. But almost 40 percent of this is from earlier days. Karnataka and Tamil nadu they are the other two states that consistently report more than 100 deaths per day. The death toll in Karnataka was relatively low until mid-July, but has skyrocketed after that. In August, there were only six days in which the state reported fewer than 100 deaths.
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Top 10 States with Maximum Covid-19 Case Burden
Among the ten states with the highest number of cases, Assam Bihar and Telangana have surprisingly low death counts. In fact, Assam has reported only 323 deaths, and with more than 1.15 lakh of cases, it has a fatality rate of 0.28%, the lowest in the country for any major state.
The daily death count is likely to rise further in the coming week due to the sharp increase in the number of infections we are witnessing right now. People whose deaths are being reported at this time are from the batch that would have been found to be infected at least ten days ago. At that time, India was discovering between 60,000 and 70,000 new cases every day. In the last week, this number has risen substantially, topping 75,000 on most days.
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The Daily Increase in Covid-19 Cases in India
On Wednesday, the number of new cases surpassed 80,000 for the first time. Almost 84,000 new infections were discovered, bringing the total number of infected people in the country to 38.53 lakh.
Maharashtra hit a new record on Wednesday, finding nearly 17,500 new cases, as did Karnataka, which reported nearly 10,000 cases.
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