Tamil Nadu sees 500 deaths in 5 days, but new coronavirus cases decrease

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu’s Covid-19 death toll is rising even as the number of fresh cases is slowly dipping. There have been 500 deaths in the last five days, including 109 on Monday, the first time the daily toll touched three figures. The time it takes for the number of deaths to double had dropped to 19 days from 24 days on July 28.
The case fatality rate for TN at 1.6% is one of the lowest among high prevalence states.But it’s not uniform across districts. It’s 2.1% in Chennai, among the worst-hit district. Madurai, Ramanathapuram and Sivaganga too record a little over 2%.

TN announced the first Covid-19 death on March 25 when a 54-year-old succumbed to the viral infection in Madurai. In April, the state reported 26 Covid-19 deaths, and the following month it had 146 deaths and in June it added another 1,028. Until then the case fatality rate in the state, including the worst-hit Chennai, the mortality rate was hovering between 0.7 and 1.6.
In July there were 1,845 deaths, and the health department added 444 Covid deaths that had gone unrecorded between March and July in Chennai. The three days of August saw 306 deaths.
Public health experts and epidemiologists point to several reasons for the high death rate in the city. Analysis of medical records by the public health department showed that a combination of diabetes and hypertension was the most common risk factor among the deceased.
But officials are also increasingly finding more people coming to hospitals with severe symptoms. “As we are seeing a shift in cases to the southern districts, we have been noticing an increase in the number of people with symptoms now compared to initial months. There is also an increase in deaths among patients with no comorbidities,” said health secretary J Radhakrishnan.
“Deaths were expected to go up. Now, we should also be careful of post Covid complications,” said infectious diseases expert Dr Subramanian Swaminathan, who is pushing for a registry to monitor 30 day and 90 days morbidity and mortality of patients who have recovered from the infection.
The city, officials in the public health department say, has more facilities for testing, hospitals and Covid care centres compared to many other districts. “We are reconciling deaths periodically minimizing chances of errors. Also the number of people with co-morbid conditions such as diabetes and hypertension is higher in urban populations compared to rural areas,” said director of public health Dr T S Selvavinayagam.
Of the 5,609 fresh cases on Monday, Chennai had 1,021 while its three neighbours Chengalpet (331), Kancheepuram (322) and Tiruvallur (332) together recorded 1,185. The region recorded 33 deaths, including 30 in Chennai. An eight-year-old girl with Wilson Disease and acute liver failure admitted to the Institute of Child Health on July 30, died on August 1 after she was tested positive.
Among the other northern districts Tiruvannamalai recorded 212 cases and Ranipet 382. Together the northern districts had 3101 fresh cases, 44 deaths and 30,513 of the 56,698 active cases in TN.
The ten districts in the south together reported 1,550 new cases and 43 deaths. Virudhunagar had the highest number of cases, 348, and deaths, nine. Western districts logged 502 cases and 12 deaths and central districts 441 cases and 10 deaths.