COVID-19 death rate in Nanded down to 3.3 per cent: Collector

Contact tracing and detection of infection among senior citizens has helped bring down the COVID-19 death rate in Maharashtra's Nanded district to 3.3 per cent from 5 per cent, collector Vipin Itankar said on Friday.

Contact tracing and detection of infection among senior citizens has helped bring down the COVID-19 death rate in Maharashtra's Nanded district to 3.3 per cent from 5 per cent, collector Vipin Itankar said on Friday. The district administration had kicked off a campaign called "Come forward Nandedkar", encouraging people to reach out to treatment facilities and get examined, the collector told PTI.

During this campaign, several senior citizens were examined and treated in the comfort of their homes, he said. "We also constituted a team to carry a medico- administrative audit of deaths to find out what caused the delay in early detection of critical cases," Dr Itankar said.

Testing in containment areas was prioritised, he said, adding that bed capacity for critical patients in the government-run facilities has been increased to 130 and 80 more will be added in the next 10 days. "Our aim is to carry out 1 lakh antigen tests, of which 20,000 have already been conducted," Dr Itankar said.

With consistent efforts, the death rate in the district has come down to 3.3 percent from the earlier 5 per cent, he said. Meanwhile, the detection of 115 new cases on Thursday has taken the COVID-19 tally in Nanded to 4,670.

The district has recorded 160 deaths, while 2,803 patients have recovered from the infection so far, a release here stated..