Covid deaths in March down 95% from third wave’s January peak

Mumbai: Covid deaths in the state in March have fallen by a staggering 90% against 737 casualties reported in February. The slide is 95% if compared with the third wave peak of January, when 1,524 deaths were seen.

The only time the state had come close to few deaths like the 73 in March so far was in December 2021 (262), when the second wave was ebbing.

Dr Pradeep Awate, state surveillance officer, said March saw the lowest fatalities since the virus arrived, and there are several districts without any deaths this month. The state has been reporting deaths in single digits for the past 20 days. There were also six days when not a single fatality was reported.

Friday’s death reconciliation exercise meant a jolt to Mumbai: its official Covid toll has jumped the highest among districts. It went up from 16,693 to 19,558 as 2,865 ‘deaths due to other causes were included in the overall Covid-19 toll.

Could the dip in testing affect the recording of Covid-19 deaths? Awate said it was unlikely since the surveillance of influenza-like illnesses and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) is aggressively done.

“This is the best situation we possibly have been in so far in the pandemic,” said Dr Rakesh Bhadade, head of the intensive care unit at B Y L Nair Hospital. The hospital, once a dedicated Covid centre, didn’t see a single critical admission due to Covid this month. “Not a single patient needed oxygen support, leave alone ventilator. It is great news for non-Covid patients,” he added.

On Friday, Mumbai had a single critical Covid patient, as per the BMC dashboard, out of 25 patients admitted across hospitals. Awate said Omicron was the dominant strain in every part of the state. The variant that had driven the third wave was relatively milder than Delta, which caused the devastating second wave last year. During the second wave peak, the state had recorded 29,551 deaths in April and 28,664 deaths in May, the two deadliest months.

Dr Rahul Pandit, a member of the state Covid task force, said the horrors of the first and the second wave are unlikely to be seen again as long as the vaccination coverage is saturated and there is no lethal variant at play. However, his word of caution for people is not to discontinue masking and for hospitals to convert Covid wards so that they can be retransformed for Covid at short notice. “Genome sequencing is also the key to staying ahead of any emerging variant,” he added.