Covid-19: India set to cross 100,000 deaths today

India will cross the 100,000-mark for deaths due to Coronavirus disease (Covid-19), today.

With 1,093 new deaths recorded on Thursday, the death toll due to the highly infectious viral disease has touched 99,824 so far in the country, according to the government data.

At least 80% Covid-19 deaths are reported from 10 states, of which nearly 40% deaths are reported from the state of Maharashtra with 394 deaths reported on Thursday alone, followed by Karnataka with 130 deaths. As on date both the states have recorded a total of 37,056 and 9,013 Covid-19 related deaths respectively.

The first Covid-19 death was reported on March 12, from south India. Even though the country is reaching 0.1 million deaths in 7 months, India’s Covid-19 death rate is among the lowest in the world. Country’s current case fatality rate, which is the proportion of people who die of a disease among total number of patients diagnosed with the disease, stands at 1.56%. The figure is nearly half of the global CFR that is about 3% at the moment.

On average, close to 0.8 million cases are being reported daily from across the country over the past one month, taking the total number of people infected with Covid-19 in the country to date to 6.4 million.

First sample returned positive for Covid-19 in India on January 30.

Comorbidities, or underlying medical conditions, result in death in almost 70% of the total Covid-19 positive patients, according to the government data.

Chronic medical conditions that have been commonly observed in Covid-19 patients include hypertension, diabetes, liver disease, heart disease, asthma, chronic renal disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), low immunity, malignancy, bronchitis and chronic neuromuscular disease among others.

Hypertension and diabetes are the two most common comorbidities that lead to the disease progressing to severe levels among covid-19 patients.

Fever, cough and sore throat are the most common three symptoms that Covid-19 cases experience, followed by breathlessness.

“Fever and cough are quite common symptoms that Covid-19 positive cases get. There are other symptoms also such as diarrhoea, weakness, breathlessness etc. that some patients complain of,” said Dr GC Khilnani, former head, department of pulmonology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi.(HT)