State logs highest spike with over 7,500 cases in a day

Jharkhand reported its highest-ever single-day spike in the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths after registering 7,595 new cases and 106 deaths from across the state till Thursday night, according to the state health department’s bulletin released on Friday morning (April 23).

These new cases were detected after testing 73,903 samples, registering a positivity rate of over 10%. This means that out of every 100 samples tested, 10 returned positive.

The state, that was testing around 35,000-40,000 samples every day, cleared its backlog of untested samples on Thursday, resulting in the steep surge in positive cases.

Jharkhand, till Friday morning, was yet to test 15,772 samples piled up at seven different laboratories across the state. The maximum 3,552 samples were pending at Hazaribag Medical College and Hospital, while only 633 samples were pending at Ranchi’s Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS).

According to the health department’s April 23 morning bulletin, state capital Ranchi reported the maximum 1,467 cases and 53 deaths. Hazaribagh, however, registered an unprecedented growth after detecting 1,065 new cases. East Singhbhum, with its headquarters in Jamshedpur, unearthed 729 cases and reported 14 deaths.

Five other districts--Ramgarh, Deoghar, Koderma, Bokaro and Palamu--too reported high number of cases with each discovering more than 400 cases.

According to experts, the state’s biggest cause of concern was the high number of deaths. Jharkhand has reported 602 Covid-19 deaths so far in April alone.

“We have been caught unprepared this time, as we did not care to strengthen the health infrastructure at all, presuming that the pandemic was over. Indications of scientific community were grossly ignored. The measures taken to contain the first wave were also undone at many places this time and the result is before everyone to see,” said Dr RK Jha, former professor and head of department of medicine, RIMS.

He added, “This wave came just like a sea tide. It contains a new virus strain, that is either a double mutant ‘Indian variant’ or ‘UK variant;’ or even recently discovered triple mutant ‘West Bengal variant’, which is much more infectious. It is infecting children and young generation of both genders equally in larger numbers.”

Recently published reports underline that the average hospital stay of admitted patients was getting longer, suggesting more complications and, therefore, more deaths, he said.

The daily spike in positive cases also pushed the number of active cases to over the 40,000-mark, posing a big challenge for health mandarins in effective management of cases. In Ranchi, almost all hospitals, both in government and private sectors, were running at full capacity with all Covid-19 beds occupied. To make things worse, there was a huge scarcity of oxygen supported beds and ventilators. People, observing home isolation, have also been wandering in search of oxygen cylinders.

According to the bulletin, Jharkhand has so far reported 184,951 cases, including 142,294 recoveries, 40,942 active cases and 1,715 deaths.

Box

Daily detection of cases and deaths in last 10 days

Date. Cases/Deaths

April 22:. 7595/106

April 21:. 5041/62

April 20: 4969/45

April 19:. 4401/46

April 18:. 3992/50

April 17:. 3838/30

April 16:. 3843/56

April 15:. 3480/28

April 14: 3198/31

April 13:. 2844/29