Covid: Pune has the highest proportion of critical patients, shows data

The proportion of patients requiring hospitalisations is highest in Kolkata, followed by Mumbai

On Sunday, Mumbai reported 8,063 Covid infections; compared to last week, the number of daily infections in the city had increased 8.5 times, the positivity in the country's financial capital had jumped 6.4 times, whereas active infections had increased 6.9 times.

While Mumbai leads all the other cities in terms of daily infections, analysis shows that the growth rate of infections for Kolkata and Delhi has been higher.

In Delhi, daily Covid-19 infections increased 12.8 times between December 26 and January 2, causing an 8.3 times rise in positivity and a 7.6-times rise in active cases.

Kolkata witnessed a 14.6-times rise in daily infections, but the active caseload increased 3.4-times in the last week. Positivity data is not available for Kolkata, but for the entire state of West Bengal positivity rate jumped 6.6-times during this period.

Bengaluru and Pune had a muted growth with only 5.4 times and 3.2 times increase in daily cases.

A Business Standard analysis shows that this wide variation exists even in proportion of hospitalised cases across cities.

In Delhi, while only 5.2 per cent of the active cases required hospitalisation, the proportion was almost double in Mumbai and Kolkata. In Mumbai, 10.3 per cent of the active cases were hospitalised. In Kolkata, 11.9 per cent or 1,010 of the 8,469 active cases required hospitalisation.

On the other hand, Pune had the highest levels of critical patients across all cities. Of the over 2,000 active cases in the Pune Municipal Corporation area, 161, or 7.8 per cent, required a ventilator, whereas 3.7 per cent needed an ICU. The corresponding ratios of active cases requiring a ventilator and ICU were 0.8 per cent and 1.3 per cent, respectively.

Among the three cities with a roughly similar number of active infections—Mumbai, Delhi and Pune—the proportion of critical patients varied widely. In Delhi, while 0.6 per cent required a ventilator and 1.4 per cent needed an ICU bed, in Bengaluru, only 0.1 per cent and 0.5 per cent required a ventilator and an ICU. The ratios for Kolkata were higher at 1.4 per cent and 2.3 per cent.

During the last wave, the proportion requiring hospitalisation was much higher. Although time series analysis is not available on hospitalisations, data from Delhi, Mumbai and Pune shows that nearly a fifth of the active infections required hospitalisation in all three cities in April last year. In Delhi, 3.3 per cent of active cases required a ventilator, whereas 4.6 per cent required an ICU.