Coronavirus: Ahmedabad has highest fatality rate among major cities

On Thursday, Gujarat crossed the grave milestone of 5,000 mortalities during the ongoing pandemic. A day before, Ahmedabad had become the 10th district in India to have over 2,500 deaths. Analysis of the mortality trend in major cities revealed that Ahmedabad had case fatality rate (CFR) of 2.7% — the highest among 11 districts of India having 2,500-plus deaths.

The district also got another distinction of being the only in India that bore half the burden of the state. Out of 5,000-odd deaths, Ahmedabad accounted for 50% of the mortality. To put the figure in perspective, Chennai reported one out of every three deaths of Tamil Nadu, and Mumbai one out of four.

“Higher concentration of the population is one of the factors, but one must also realize that the city has a huge catchment area as it got critical patients from across the state in later phase of pandemic. Geriatric population and overall health profile of the population might have also played a role,” said a city-based public health expert.

Initial phase of pandemic was more severe for the city with the daily deaths reaching up to 39 – which later got reduced to average 12-17 in the second wave. In the third wave, the highest daily deaths recorded by the district is 26 on April 16.