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Eastern Mirror Desk
Dimapur, Aug. 8 (EMN): Nagaland Health authorities have confirmed six Covid-19 deaths in the state so far.
According to a Health department update on Saturday, the ‘state death review/audit committee’ has reviewed and confirmed six deaths; however, the figure is subject to change as per advisory from the union ministry of Health and Family Welfare or the National Centre for Disease Control.
“Out of 6 Covid deaths, five cases have severe co-morbidity like diabetes, hypertension, tuberculosis, chronic heart and liver diseases. There are five males and one female among the deaths. Three cases are below 55 years of age.
“For classifying a death as Covid-19 death, the state and district death committees have to establish a correlation as per ICD-10 and ICMR protocols. Our data reiterates again that our ultimate goal should be to protect the high-risk groups (people with co-morbidities and old age),” it stated.
The department explained that the low recovery rate of Nagaland, at 31%, against the national rate of 67% was due to the “stricter policy of discharge in the state where a negative test is still mandatory”. The Centre’s standard operating procedure does not require a negative test for discharge of mild and symptomatic cases, it added.
“The last week recorded the highest weekly spike in cases at 964 with majority of cases from the armed forces. The gender is heavily skewed towards males. The cases from military also contribute to it. But higher proportion of male cases among returnees could point towards self-discipline issues.
“Majority of cases are in the healthy 18-44 age group which can explain the large number of asymptomatic cases. The testing rate per thousand for the State is 19.98, higher than the country’s average of 17.36,” it informed.
Though the positivity rate in the state has increased from 4.51% to 6.11 % in the past week, it is still lower than the country’s rate of 8.93%, the department said.
“There are two BSL labs and 29 TrueNat machines (highest in Northeast region) in the state. The state is also using Rapid Antigen Tests for emergency settings and private hospitals have been allowed to use the same. The BSL-2 lab in Tuensang is expected to be functional soon,” it informed.
Thirty-one fresh cases of Covid-19 were detected in Nagaland on Saturday; out of which 11 were from the armed forces, 10 traced contacts, five returnees, four frontline workers, and one was classified as ‘others’ — which include cases related to NLA, Raj Bhavan, and patients excluding returnees.
With the addition of Saturday’s cases, the total number of cases in the state climbed to 2688.
According to the minister for Health and Family Welfare, S Pangnyu Phom, out of the 31 new cases, 12 were from Kohima, 10 from Dimapur, six from Zunheboto and three from Wokha.
In his daily briefing, Home Commissioner Abhijit Sinha informed that out of the total 2688 positive cases, 1785 were active and seven deaths.
“As per the severity of symptoms, 1,782 active cases are asymptomatic, one active case is mild, and two active cases are moderate. Further, out of the 2688 positive cases, the distribution across various categories of people are: 1,184 cases from paramilitary/military; 1,056 cases from returnees; 189 cases from frontline workers; 205 cases are traced contacts; and 54 cases are of others,” he said.