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India’s daily Covid deaths increased to 871 on Saturday as against 627 on Friday, as per the Health Ministry data. However, the daily infections were less than 3 lakh cases for the fifth straight day at 2,35,532.
According to experts, most of these deaths are among people with the co-morbid conditions who also test Covid simultaneously. Health Ministry has previously said that 64 per cent of the Covid deaths in Delhi were among those who were unvaccinated or have comorbid conditions. On Saturday, there were 28 deaths in the National Capital with 4,483 cases. The positivity rate in the city was at 7.41 per cent with active cases of 24,800.
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The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuhan University shows close relation between NeoCov and MERS“Most of these deaths are not due to Covid-19 directly. If you analyse the cause of death in all these cases, you will note that these persons were suffering from multiple comorbid conditions and have also tested positive for Covid-19. Now, I would not like to be on record on this but the fact is that due to their Covid positivity, these patients are shifted to Covid dedicated hospitals for isolation but in these hospitals, the treatment of their co-morbid conditions is invariably adversely affected leading to increased number of deaths,” a top Health Ministry official told BusinessLine.
Delta variant
As per Rakesh Pandit, Senior Consultant & HOD, Internal Medicine, Aakash Healthcare, Dwarka, increase in daily deaths could be due to Delta variant as it is more severe than the Omicron variant. Also, there are some few places where Delta is a predominant variant, he said. Many people who have other ailments are getting tested Covid positive, so there are many incidental Covid deaths, he further added.
“We do see a few cases getting admitted in intensive care units, requiring oxygen and ventilator assistance . Most of such patients are unvaccinated or elderly and frail and have multiple pre existing medical comorbidities which suppress underlying immunity like diabetes, post transplant, patients with pre-existing cardiac ailments and those on steroids.
In addition, we do see few patients with brain stroke and myocardial infarction who are incidentally found to be positive for Covid-19 with RT PCR or antigen testing, even without exhibiting symptoms of viral illness like fever, cough or breathlessness. Most of the mortality due to Omicron are primarily related to pre existing health ailments and we are seeing a decrease in patients with viral pneumonias causing respiratory failure as witnessed with prior delta variant,” Viswesvaran Balasubramanian, Consultant Interventional Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine, Yashoda Hospitals Hyderabad stated.
Besides this, the weekly positivity rate in the country stood at 16.89 per cent and the daily positivity rate was at 13.39 per cent. India conducted 17.59 lakh tests on Friday along with the administration of 56.03 shots till 6:30 in the evening on Saturday.
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