The national Capital has been reporting a high death rate even after the Delhi Government resolved the oxygen crisis and the shortage of beds. However, experts say that the number will come down drastically in a week or two. Doctors at various hospitals attributed the high number of deaths in Delhi as compared to the number of cases, to the critical patients who were admitted to hospitals earlier during the peak of the outbreak.
Dr MS Kanwar, Senior Consultant Respiratory Medicine, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, said that the current death rate consists of the data of patients who were admitted to hospitals with severe complications weeks ago and have been succumbing to the infection over the days.
Dr Kanwar added that even as the number of cases reported in the national Capital has gone down in the last one week, the Current Fatality Rate (CFR) will continue to be relatively higher for some time as some of the critical patients who were admitted during the peak period and who had gone on to ventilators and were struggling for their lives in ICUs finally succumb to the virus infection.
“The fatal disease with a longer morbidity period tends to have a significant lag period between the fall in new cases and in mortality. The current CFR tends to go up temporarily as many critical patients do not survive,” he explained.
Dr Anant Mohan, Head of Pulmonary Medicine at AIIMS, Delhi, said that the high number of recorded deaths in the city was the result of patients admitted to ICUs with severe Covid-19 infection in April and the first week of May. Now, the fatality rate will come down in days to come as the situation has improved. With the cases going down, the number of deaths will also start falling.
Dr Arvind Kumar, Chairman of Institute of Chest Surgery, Medanta Hospital, Gurugram said: “The deaths being reported this week are a result of the infections which occurred two weeks ago when the number of Covid cases were very high. Those who got infected during the peak and were admitted in hospitals will continue to die over the next one or two weeks.”
Now that the number of cases reported is less compared to April, the death rate will come down in three weeks from now, he added.
Explaining it further Dr Kumar said that death does not occur the same day if a person is infected with Covid as the virus causes fever for about five to seven days and then most of the lung involvement manifests between eight to 14 days. Depending on the line of treatment, the level of care and any secondary complications, the patients either survives or dies.
“The death can take place in the second, third, fourth and fifth week,” he said.
Dr Rommel Tickoo, Director, Internal Medicine, Max Healthcare said that the death rate now is a result of a high number of severe cases reported all at once earlier. “Thousands of people caught infection at the same time and many of them were admitted in ICUs with severe complications. Many of them are still critical and dying. The number will gradually come down along with the fall in cases,” he added.
Experts also stressed that Delhi has passed its peak since the initial wave of the Covid-19 hit the city as the positivity rate came down to 4.76 per cent on Friday from about five times that figure only a few weeks ago.