Karnataka marks drop in Covid-19 deaths except Bengaluru

An analysis of official data reveals that while the state of Karnataka has observed a gradual decline in the death count of Covid-19 cases, Bengaluru continues to have consistency in terms of death rate. An expert has revealed that the private hospitals are to be blamed.

As per Sanjeev Mysore working on Jeevan Raksha project, he reveals the comparison where the other districts have cases dropped by 30 per cent but Bengaluru Urban noted only 4 % drop.

Considering the numbers in September, from 3,018 cases, nearly 30 % happened in the city. However, the month of October has seen a surge in the death cases again. Presently, in this month, from 1,947 deaths in the state, over 40 % were from Bengaluru.

Moreover, for the nine days in the month of November, 46.9 % from the updated death count of 145 was incident in Bengaluru.

The government is considering the decline in the number of cases as a victory over the deadly virus. Dr K V Thrilok Chandra, Head of the Critical Care Support Unit iterated on two factors – Increase in the testing and more enhanced clinical confidence. He said, “The number of Covid deaths in Bengaluru has been slower to come down because the city is dealing with a large chunk of cases daily.”

He further said, “If the patient has multiple comorbidities and is put on ventilators, treating this requires pulmonologists, unfortunately, Bengaluru has only around 70 of them”

The government assessment data submitted on November 9 revealed 3,995 deaths in 20 hospitals in the city from the period between March 26 to November 9. The hospital with the most number of deaths was HBS hospital, which had case fatality rate of 18.73 per cent.

Dr. Taha Mateen, Chairman of HBS, stated majority of the patients were severely ill on admitting to hospital. He said, “We took every patient who came to us. Our records show 51 deaths in total (from 6 July to 22 October). All were on the ventilator, in the ICU.”

Dr Taha added that the remaining dead bodies were tested negative for disease despite exhibiting the symptoms and disease effects. He also spoke on the lack of medical staff issue in June, which has been fixed.