Daily deaths cross 1,000 for the third time in last 10 days

NEW DELHI: The daily death toll from the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India crossed the 1,000-mark for the third time in the last 10 days as the country reported 1,103 new fatalities on Tuesday, highlighting the recent rise in number of daily deaths in the country.

Before Tuesday, daily deaths in the country have crossed the 1,000-mark four times – 2,004 fatalities were lodged on June 16; 1,130 deaths registered on July 22; 1,018 deaths on August 9 and 1,010 deaths on August 13. On the first instance (June 16), the cause of the spike in daily deaths was Delhi and Maharashtra reporting a reconciliation of deaths.

On the second instance (July 22), the death reconciliation panel in Chennai corrected discrepancy in the city’s Covid-19 numbers by adding 444 deaths to the toll. This means that all actual instances of the daily deaths touching four-digits (if we exclude days when backdated deaths were lodged in the tally) have been reported in the past 10 days. “Country’s current case fatality rate is under 2%, which means fewer Covid-19 patients in India are dying of the disease. The sudden rise in mortality figures on some days does not necessarily mean these are deaths that happened in a single day rather it could also be because of the data backlog sometimes,” explained a government official in the know of things, who did not wish to be identified.

The total cases in the country have climbed to 2,763,712 as of Tuesday night. Among these, a total of 53,010 people have died, while 2,034,828 patients have recovered and been discharged. At present, there are 675,874 active cases in the country.

India has the third highest number of infections in the world after the United States (5.6 million cases and over 175,000 deaths) and Brazil (3.4 million cases and over 110,000 deaths).

However, India’s case fatality ratio – the proportion of confirmed cases that end up dying – is far lower than the other two nations. Around 1.9% of Covid patients in India have succumbed to the disease, while 3.1% cases have resulted in deaths in the US and 3.2% in Brazil. Globally, there have been more than 21 million cases of the coronavirus disease and 773,152 deaths – taking the global CFR to 3.5%.