Critical Covid-19 cases: Delhi, Mumbai patients seem more critically ill than in other parts of India

Both Delhi and Mumbai are adding fewer Covid-19 patients than they did a month ago; they reported around 1,000 patients each every day in August as compared to 1,200 for Mumbai and 1,600 for Delhi in July.  They also seem to have relatively high recovery rates; Mumbai has a recovery rate of 81% while for Delhi it is 89%.  But their patients seem to be more critically ill than in other parts of the country.

At its briefing last week, the health ministry said 15% of the country’s patients needed hospitalisation whereas data from daily bulletins show 28.8% of active cases in Delhi are hospitalised while for Mumbai, the number is 36.7%.

In the case of critical cases too, both cities seem to buck the national trend. While nationally 1.9% of patients need to be in ICUs, the number is 6.6% for Delhi and 6.3% for Mumbai. Similarly, for ventilator care, while the national average is 0.3%, it is 3.3% for Delhi. Mumbai and Pune also had high rates for those requiring ventilator care at 4.2% and 3.2% respectively.

This may also be the reason that Delhi, Mumbai and Pune have higher death rates than the national average. On August 30, India had a case fatality rate of 1.8%. Delhi, Mumbai and Pune, on the other hand, had a case fatality rate of 2.6%, 5.3% and 2.4% respectively. It is not clear why cities that are known to have better health infrastructure should have a higher number of critical patients.