South Tamil Nadu registers most Covid deaths in May

MADURAI: The southern districts have seen a rapid increase in Covid-19 deaths in the second wave, with the toll in May alone coming up to 78% of the total deaths from the disease in the region from March 2020 to April this year.
Madurai continues to top the table with 902 deaths till May 31, of which 385 were added in a month. Kanyakumari follows with 728, out of which 426 died in a month.The total Covid-19 deaths in all the southern districts till April were 2,323, but another 1,809 were added in May, taking the toll to 4,132 by May 31.
Sources at Government Rajaji Hospital say the high number of deaths in Madurai is also because the hospital has a patient overload as it is the biggest GH for all the ten southern districts. It is the first hospital where patients seek relief in an emergency situation. Madurai is also the hub of private hospitals in the southern districts.
Virudhunagar district is third in terms of death toll with 410 so far while Dindigul recorded an 89% increase in May compared to the deaths in the previous 14 months. Sivaganga district, which has comparatively lesser medical infrastructure, has seen fewer deaths. The total till April 2021 was 132 while it had just 29 deaths in May, taking its total to 161 till date.
However, the death rate in many of the southern districts has decreased now, except for Kanyakumari, Dindigul and Tenkasi which have been seeing an increase.
The overall death rate of the southern districts had decreased to 1.15% by May end from 1.24% till April as the total cases had also gone up. The number which was 1,85,189 till April went up by 1,74,217 cases in May — a 94% increase — to touch 3,59,409.
Kanyakumari district collector M Arvind said one reason for the high deaths could be the presence of a large number of private hospitals in the district, which shared about 2,000 beds for patients from other districts who came there for treatment. Though the Asaripallam medical college hospital has a 24KL oxygen tank, which was sufficient to meet the requirement, some private hospitals faced issues when the second wave hit. “But now the situation has stabilised and we are able to give the private hospitals also a fair share of liquid oxygen and we expect the deaths to come down,’’ he said
Dindigul district collector M Vijayalakshmi said the referral of critical cases from private hospitals to government institutes at the last moment was a challenge and now they had asked the private hospitals to ensure that very critical cases are not transferred to GH. In terms of oxygen requirement, the district was able to meet its needs, she said.