Rise in number of Covid-19 cases should not be a cause of concern as long as number of serious patients and deaths due to disease remain low

The rise in number of Covid-19 cases should not be a cause of concern as long as the number of serious patients and deaths due to the disease remain low, public health experts in Gujarat said.

They are also of the view that the new cases being reported daily should be categorised as mild, moderate or severe to better understand the pandemic.

Covid-19 "We are finding new cases everyday, but the first thing we need to know is how many of them are serious," said Dileep Mavalankar, Director of the Gandhinagar-based Indian Institute of Public Health.

"The government should report how many new patients have been put on oxygen or ventilator support...we are reporting low mortality," he said.

The new cases should be divided into three categories- mild, moderate, if a patient needs oxygen, and severe, if he/she needs ventilator support, he said.

CoronavirusIn a recent study, Mavalankar found that between March and July, the percentage of deaths due to Covid-19 compared to other diseases in India was 1.3, as against 13 per cent in the US and 17.6 per cent in the UK.

He said the government should not neglect fatalities due to other reasons just to control the over one per cent Covid-19 deaths.

At the same time, the government should provide more data in the public domain for experts to understand the pandemic situation better, he said.

Coronavirus

The data should include the nature of new daily cases, as to how many of them are mild, moderate or severe. The government should also provide data separately on the number of suspected Covid-19 cases and the cases being reported in urban and rural areas, Mavalankar said.

"The disease will, of course, spread. Even high profile people are getting the disease. We need to focus on reducing the number of deaths. In terms of data, we need to ask the government to separate mild cases from moderate and severe," he said.

Gujarat Covid-19 task force member Dr Tushar Patel said though more new cases of the disease are being reported every day, a large number of patients are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic.

Coronavirus"Hence, the situation is not worrying as such patients get treated with home isolation," he said.

"There are active cases, but the number of critically ill patients has gone down, as we can see empty beds in ICUs of dedicated Covid-19 hospitals. Active cases will remain, but at the same time the positivity rate has come down," he said.