Puducherry's Covid-19 toll mounts to 458, fatality rate remains at 2%

The COVID-19 death toll in the

union territory of Puducherry mounted to 458 on Sunday with ten more people succumbing to the disease as the case fatality rate remained at two per cent, higher than 1.61 per cent at the national level.

A total of 471 fresh cases took the overall case tally to 22,923 (after transfer of four cases to neighbouring Tamil Nadu), the health department said.

There were 4,909 active cases with 17,556 patients being discharged, including 347 in the last 24 hours, and 458 fatalities so far, Director of Health and Family Welfare S Mohan Kumar said in a release.

The fresh deaths included six women as the fatality rate continued to be two per cent while the recovery rate was 76.59 percent, he said.

The government has blamed non-disclosure of COVID-19 symptoms by people during field visits by health officials as a major reason for the high fatality rate in the UT.

A total of 4,675 samples were tested, taking the number of specimens examined so far to 1,35,259. A total of 1,07,765 samples had returned negative and the result awaited for the remaining.

The ten people who succumbed to infection were from the Puducherry region and in the age group ranging between 30 and 88 and most of them had co-morbidities.

The Puducherry region accounted for 345 of the fresh cases followed by Karaikal 101, Yanam 16 and Mahe nine.