Covid: Odisha’s official death count this year less than one-third of first wave

BHUBANESWAR: Odisha on Thursday reported 25 Covid deaths, the highest in a day since beginning of the pandemic last year, taking the officially confirmed death toll to 2,403. While the positive cases in second wave is now almost equal to that in first, the number of official death count is less than one-third this time.
The state on Thursday reported 11,498 new infections taking total virus case load in the state to 6,55,899.The total positive cases reported this year (from January 1) at 3,26,033 has come close to the number reported last year of 3,29,866. However, the official death figures this time remain an incredibly less than one-third of the deaths reported last year.
Government figures said 1929 Covid patients (0.58%) died last year: 1876 died of Covid and 53 Covid patients died due to other reasons. This year, however, only 527 have died of Covid (there is no death of Covid patients reported due to other reasons) registering a death rate of 0.16%.
Additional chief secretary (health) Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra said deaths reported so far may not be the actual figures. “Each death of Covid patient is reported to a committee led by the director medial education and training (DMET). The committee audits them and find out which patient died of covid. There may be pendency because of the workload. So actual number of deaths may be more,” Mohapatra told TOI.
“I have asked the district administrations to expedite sending the death summaries to the committee so that the audits are done faster,” he said. Apart from DMET, director health and director public health are other members of the committee. The low death count has baffled many amid rising load on cremation grounds and expansions of crematoriums in many parts of the state. A statement issued by Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation on May 14 had noted rising number of bodies and pressure on Satya Nagar crematorium in city.
After showing early downward trend in new Covid infections for three days, the cases have started going up again in Odisha for past two days raising concern that the numbers may shoot up further. The 11,498 new infections is more compared to 11,099 a day earlier, while day-to-day numbers had started falling from 12,390 reported on May 14 to 10,321 on Tuesday. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday tweeted that Odisha with a positivity of 22.8% is among 22 states having positivity above 15%.
Jayant Panda, government’s technical adviser on Covid-19, said such fluctuation is not unexpected. “The number may rise for some more days before it starts falling again,” he said. Weekly positivity from May 13-19 is above 10% in 27 districts (except Malkangiri, Kandhamal and Kendrapada).
Currently, 14,389 patients are hospitalised in the state. They include 2486 in the ICU. As many as 614 patients are on ventilator support.