Bihar records most Covid deaths in a day, shows faulty testing strategy

Coronavirus (Covid-19) infections continued to scale new highs in the country and were just shy of 60,000 on Thursday, with fatalities rising as well and the country registering 257 deaths.

The death rate in the country, however, is nowhere near the peak during the first wave of infections. While India is recording 9 deaths per 1,000 cases at present, last year in September, when the country came close to recording 100,000 cases, this number stood at 14. However, the number of daily deaths have increased 2.2 times in just a month. The one-week average of deaths for the week ending March 25 was 226; on February 25, the weekly average of deaths was 102.

Even though Punjab and Maharashtra account for 60% of the country’s total deaths, in terms of the new death number, Bihar has fared the worst.

Bihar, on Thursday, recorded 40 deaths per 1,000 cases—an increase of five times over the last month when the state recorded 8 deaths for every 1,000 cases.

While this does not necessarily indicate that more people are dying in Bihar, it does hint at a faulty testing strategy, where the state finds fewer infections.

In the past, whenever a state recorded a rise in new deaths, it was usually accompanied by a rise in infections as the state ramped up testing.

For instance, in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gujarat’s high death rate puzzled many. However, the fatality rates declined when the state started testing more people. A similar situation was witnessed in West Bengal.

Even in Bihar, testing has taken a hit. While the state was averaging over 100,000 daily tests in December, this declined to 87,718 tests in January and further fell to 52,042 tests in February. In March, the daily average has further reduced to 37,370 daily tests.

The pick-up in testing in the last week has been accompanied by a rise in the number of infections and an increase in the positivity rate.

On Thursday, Bihar had tested 52,784 samples, of which 258 were found positive, leading to a positivity rate of 0.5%. A month ago, the state’s positivity rate was a low 0.2%.

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