For the first time after a long pause, Mysuru, the State’s second COVID-19 hotspot after Bengaluru, is seeing more discharges than active cases, bringing a brief succour to the people fighting the pandemic for many months.
After an alarming spike, driving the frontline healthcare workers into a combat mode to contain the spread, the number of discharges are surpassing the number of active cases. And, in even a bigger relief, the fatalities – second highest after Bengaluru - too have seen a drop in the last two days.
On Tuesday, the number of discharges crossed the 35,000-mark, thanks to remarkable improvement in patients’ recovery, increasing the discharge rate. As on Tuesday, 35,050 infected patients had been discharged in Mysuru.
The active cases were 416 but the discharges were 693 on Tuesday. On Monday, the active cases were 309 and the discharges were 728. Barring Sunday which saw more active cases – 541 active cases and 331 discharges, the active cases dropped again on Saturday with 569 patients discharged amidst 465 active cases.
The fatalities in Mysuru were a larger concern for the administration since the mortality rate was 3.9 per cent (for a brief period), which was higher than the global COVID-19 death rate. Minister for Medical Education and Health K. Sudhakar had said here recently that Mysuru was once a model for COVID-19 management in the State but is now registering a mortality rate at 1.9 per cent whereas the national mortality rate was at 1.6 per cent, State at 1.5 per cent besides the global death rate at 3.5 per cent.
In Mysuru, three deaths were reported on Tuesday and seven on Monday. Eleven and 13 deaths were reported on Sunday and Saturday respectively. The government’s primary aim is to bring down the death rate to less than one per cent. The total number of deaths in Mysuru was 896.
In terms of disease burden and fatality, Mysuru comes next after Bengaluru, according to M.K. Sudarshan, chairman, COVID-19 Technical Advisory Committee, Bengaluru. In his recent report, he had said that the COVID-19 fatality rate in Mysuru was 2.1 per cent and test positivity rate is 17 per cent (as on October 8).
Taking up the challenge of reigning in the pandemic, Deputy Commissioner Rohini Sindhuri, who took charge recently, immediately ramped up the testing, achieving more than 100 per cent test target. Last Wednesday, 124 per cent testing was achieved in Mysuru, the highest since a long time. Special testing teams had been constituted and many officers had been posted here as well as in various places in the district for coordination and successful testing. Mysuru has now been divided into four zones for COVID-19 management and senior officers are monitoring the situation with the help of field teams.
As against the target, 45 per cent testing was done in September in Mysuru, asserting that Mysuru was in immediate need of carrying out more testing considering the positivity rate, and containing the spread of the infection in the community.
