MUMBAI: Providing an explanation for India’s “lowest across the globe” mortality rate for Covid-19, doctors from Tata Memorial Hospital, the country’s premier cancer care hospital said “geography” and “seasonal variation” could be helping India.
India has registered 38,135 deaths in the past four and half months compared to, say, 1.5 lakh in the US. India’s case fatality rate is 2.2%, said the union health ministry some days ago, crediting its “test, track, treat” strategy for the low number of deaths.
The Tata doctors, who have been treating cancer patients infected with Covid-19, said deaths rather than cases should be used to study the virus’s effects. Their viewpoint has been published online in the ICMR’s website and will feature in Indian Journal of Medical Research’s third special edition on Covid-19 in India.
“While the number of cases is dependent on the number of tests performed and hence unreliable for comparison, the number of deaths in many nations can be more reliably compared despite