All you need to know about Covid-19 testing, positivity, mortality in India’s megacities

According to a report collated by the Jeevan Raksha -- an initiative of Proxima, a management consulting firm which focuses on advocacy, analytics, and awareness in the area of healthcare-- said that India’s metropolis has seen a surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths in October, compared to September.

This comes as the total Effective Testing (after reducing 20 per cent towards retests) in megacities has increased from 2.86 million to 3.3 million.

Here is what the city-wise report of the Jeevan Raksha stated:

Bengaluru

The report revealed that Bengaluru in September had carried 6.5 lakh tests which yielded 1.3 lakh cases, the Effective Test Positivity Rate (ETPR) was 15.8 per cent. However, in October, 1.07 million tests yielded only 1.03 lac cases, ETPR* it dropped to 9.6 per cent. This indicates the deteriorated quality of testing.

Bengaluru has registered a substantial decrease in active cases. As of October 10, Bengaluru had 65,000 active cases, 47 per cent of total active cases in megacities. This has reduced to 18,000, 20 per cent of total active cases in megacities. In September, Bengaluru witnessed 971 deaths, whereas in October 928 deaths occurred.

Chennai

Chennai has also not improved for the last 6-8 weeks in any of the critical parameters. During September 1-10, around 1.08 lakh tests yielded 10,008 cases with ETPR of 9.2 per cent, whereas, during October 1-10 , the same quantity of testing (1.08 lacs) yielded 13,375 cases with ETPR of 12.4 per cent.

Amongst the megacities, Chennai is the only city that uses 100 per cent RTPCR kits for testing. This has helped to identify the very mildly infected people at the earliest and ensure they are recovered fast. Therefore, the number of active cases in Chennai is below 6,000, about 7 per cent of the total active cases of megacities. However, after Mumbai, Chennai has the highest EPTR of 14.2 per cent. There is an urgent need to strengthen the containment to stop the spread of the virus.

Mumbai

Even though the city has the highest number of deaths, the number of tests conducted is the least among the megacities. Further, the quality of testing has deteriorated in October. In September, 2.77 lakh tests yielded 59,000 cases, where the ETPR was 21.4 per cent. In October, the number of tests increased to 3.3 lakh, however, the yield was on 52,000 cases

The report revealed that 1.3 per cent of the population in Mumbai population have tested positive for Covid. In spite of the continued increase in the number of deaths, Mumbai is testing 76918 per million population, which is the least among all metro cities. The death per million in Mumbai now stands at 511 from 444.

Delhi

The number of cases and deaths surged, in testing quality in October, whereas there is a marginal increase in the quantity of testing.

In Delhi, slow and low testing lead to an increase in the number of deaths. Delhi has 44 per cent of the total active cases in megacities. Death per million has increased from 292 to 369, second highest after Mumbai (511). Delhi’s condition deteriorated as in September 1.5 per cent of the total population had tested positive for Covid. This has increased to 2.3 per cent in October. However, there is only a nominal increase in increment testing in October.

Ahmedabad

The city has managed Covid relatively well on all parameters, according to the study. The 10-day average ETPR for the period September 1-10, has dropped to 1 per cent. Further, the ETPR during September-October has been in the range of 1-1.8 per cent. During September and October, 8,576 people died in 6 mega cities, whereas in Ahmedabad only 187 deaths were reported (2 per cent).

Ahmedabad can soon become the first megacity to achieve zero active cases. The pattern of Covid-19 has been asynchronous to other metropolitan cities. Since July, Ahmedabad continued to have around 3,500 active cases. Month-on-month number of deaths constantly increased, was in 80-120 range.

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