One-fifth of active Covid cases in Delhi and Mumbai need hospitalisation

Though Delhi has only a fourth of Mumbai's active caseload, 4.6% of active cases in Delhi require ICU beds and 3.3% require a ventilators.

On Sunday, India became only the second country in the world to cross 1 lakh daily cases. While India tops the world in terms of daily case additions, many researchers have claimed that the second wave in the country is not as severe as the first one. Indeed, the number of deaths are low. As against a high of 1,247 deaths when cases were close to 90,000 on September 19, India recorded only 478 deaths on Sunday. But analysis of hospitalisation rates in some cities indicates that high hospitalisation rates, coupled with galloping active cases, can spiral into a problem.

In Mumbai, for instance, data from Sunday shows that one-fifth of the active cases required hospitalisation in dedicated covid hospitals and dedicated covid health care facilities. What's worse is that 1.8% of the active cases required a ventilator, and 2.8% required an ICU. Although these ratios are much lower than observed in November when 8.5% of people required a ventilator and 12.4% required an ICU, they are still putting a strain on the system as the number of active cases are six times higher and are rising every day.

The situation in Pune is not as bad as in Mumbai, with only 15% of active cases requiring hospitalisation and 1.2% and 1% requiring ventilator and ICUs, respectively. But, on Monday, the city had no more capacity to accommodate patients requiring ICU and ventilators as it had run out of these beds.

In fact, this is also one of the reasons Maharashtra has shut many services and will be observing weekend lockdowns.

Although the situation in Delhi—the city is facing the fourth wave—still does not warrant a lockdown, it is still worrying. Delhi may have one-fourth the number of active cases than Mumbai, its hospitalisation rates are much higher. In Delhi, of the 13,892 active cases, 21.6% required a hospital bed. More worryingly, 3.3% required a ventilator, and nearly 5% required an ICU. If these rates persist, a jump in Covid-19 cases to Mumbai levels can drain the city of its capacity.

At the height of the last wave in Delhi in November 2020, the hospitalisation rate in the national capital had reached 23%. 

Hospitalisation data from states is not widely available. Still, data from certain states' ventilator requirements shows that the situation across Gujarat is as grave as Pune, where 1.1% of active cases require a ventilator. In Karnataka and Kerala, only 0.8 and 0.6% of active cases need a ventilator. However, in Kerala, hospitalisations are as high as Pune at 15.8%. Punjab seemed on a sounder footing, but the data appears suspect as only 0.08% of the state's active cases required a ventilator.

If cases keep on rising, many states may not have the capacity to deal with overflowing infections.