Nagaland COVID death ratio surpasses India’s

May 23, 2021 39 Views No Comment

High mortality attributed to delayed hospital admission

• Record 68 fatalities this week
• New single-week high of cases
• Record single-week recoveries

Morung Express News
Dimapur | May 23

Even as the weekly sample positivity rate made a steady downturn in Nagaland, there was no let up in COVID-19 fatalities. The state surpassed the country in terms of case fatality ratio (death rate), which increased by over 2 decimal points over the week.

68 more deaths were reported this week (May 15-21) surpassing the 67 fatalities recorded the previous week (May 9-14), increasing the state’s death ratio to 1.26 % against the country’s 1.12 %. The state’s COVID death ratio was 1.02 % last week.

As per covid19india.org, only 10 other states, including 3 north-eastern states, and 2 union territories have case fatality ratios higher than Nagaland, as on May 22.

Meanwhile, the state Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) in its weekly COVID roundup released on May 22 further stated, “Among all COVID-19 Deaths in Dimapur till date, none had been fully vaccinated and only 8 had received the first dose.” As on May 21, the death toll in Dimapur was 195.

It added that 16 % of deaths occurred within 6 hours of admission and 34 % of deaths within 24 hours “signifying late arrival to COVID-19 hospital with advanced symptoms.”

Case detection: While the fatality rate increased, case detection made a slight decline. In the last one week, the number of new infections grew by an average of 1.6 % every day. The daily new infection rate was 1.7 % the previous week.

In absolute numbers, 2,062 new cases were reported during the week, topping the previous week’s tally of 1,951 cases.

Category-wise, 1,110 were detected through random testing, 778 were traced contacts, 87 were armed forces personnel, 46 were returnees/travelers and 41 were frontline workers.

Almost half of the cases were in Dimapur with the district reporting 901 new infections. Kohima reported 752, Mon- 89, Mokokchung- 79, Zunheboto- 62, Phek- 48, Tuensang- 47, Wokha- 29, Longleng- 28, Peren- 17 and Kiphire- 10.

The sample positivity rate for the week was 21.3 %, reducing from the 23 % of the previous week. Kohima, Dimapur and Mokokchung returned high positivity for the week at 33, 24 and 22 %, respectively. Zunheboto, Phek, Longleng and Peren also returned high positivity at over 10 %.

The positivity for the state was 9.4 %, which was at 10.3 % a week ago. The country’s positivity rate was at 8.1 %.

The decline in the overall positivity rate can be attributed to a noticeably enhanced sample testing over the past 2-3 weeks, as per covid19india.org data. The testing rate jumped to 96 per thousand population from 79 per thousand last week. For comparison, the testing rate for India overall was at 244 per thousand population.

1115 recoveries: There was also reassuring news as 1,115 recoveries were reported across the state. Dimapur accounted for more than half of the total recording 605 recoveries. There 343 recoveries in Kohima, 66 in Mon, 33 in Mokokchung, 18 in Zunheboto, 13 in Peren, 11 in Phek, 10 in Longleng, 8 in Wokha, 5 in Tuensang and 3 in Kiphire.

Source: https://www.morungexpress.com/nagaland-covid-death-ratio-surpasses-indias