SHIILLONG: Despite rise in fatalities due to COVID since last couple of weeks, state’s current fatality rate stands at mere 0.7 per cent, the bulk of which were due to old age and co-morbidity. Strangely, Meghalaya is witnessing more casualties among men than women.
The Commissioner and Secretary of the Health Department, Sampath Kumar while speaking to The Shillong Times about the COVID situation in expressed that the Government wanted to keep the fatalities to less than 1 per cent.
“We are focusing on how to reduce the fatality rate,” he said even as he added that the government is identifying people with co-morbidities and elderly people to give them necessary awareness on how can they keep themselves protected.
As per the official, 85 per cent of the death which have been reported in the state were either old or had co-morbidities like hypertension, diabetes or cardiology issues.
The Commissioner and Secretary also expressed concern over the fact that people come to Hospitals for treatment at a very late stage when cases are complicated while maintaining that people usually do not want to go to Hospitals out of the fear of being stigmatized. The Department has asked the stakeholders including the Rangbah Shnongs to remove social stigma of positive patients and their families so that people can get treatment at the earliest.
While the state is seeing rapid increase in the number of COVID-19 cases, till now a mere 3.3 per cent of the total population of the state have been tested for the virus.
Reacting to less number of testing being conducted in the state, Kumar said that the department is not leaving anybody who requires test.
“We may go for increased testing depending on our requirement,” he said while pointing out that every returnee is being tested and people are also being tested twice with Rapid Antigen Test as well as RTPCR tests.
In addition, tests are also being done in more than 70 identified clusters of the state and this is the reason cases were found in market places like Iewduh and Police Bazar, adding that the department is even testing the low risk category people who are not required to go for testing.
The government is also keen to ensure an efficient containment of the positive patient as isolation kills the virus and according to the officer, the government data shows that people who wear masks have not been affected by the virus.
“Our data also shows that male are more affected as most women are using masks and they follow behavioural change and follow all protocols,” Kumar said.
As of now, 74 per cent of the cases have been reported among males while 26 per cent cases have been reported among females.
The recovery rate in the state currently stands at 54% with the recovery a total of 2264 cases out of the total 4195 confirmed cases reported in the state till Wednesday. The most number of recoveries in the state has come from East Khasi Hills with 1389.
As for age distribution of cases in the last one month, 41% of the cases were reported in the age group of 30-44 years while 31% cases were reported in the age group of 15-29, while 19% cases were reported in the age group of 45-59 years and only 2% of the cases were reported among people above 60 years.
As of now, there are 22 micro-containment zones in East Khasi Hills and one each in East Jaintia Hills, West Jaintia Hills and South West Khasi Hills.
The confirmed cases per million population in the state stands at 1252 in Meghalaya which is just above Mizoram where confirmed cases per million population is 1241 whereas in states like Tripura and Assam, confirmed cases per million population stands 5052 and 4274.