Sudden spurt in COVID deaths in Kurnool; 1,139 deaths in May, highest in 14 months

KURNOOL: A sudden increase in deaths registered in May at the Kurnool Municipal Corporation (KMC) has confirmed the fears about the Covid-19’s devastating effect on the lives here. The number of deaths outnumbered the number of births registered during the month.

KMC data, shared with Deccan Chronicle, showed May alone recorded 1,139 deaths, the highest in the past 14 months. During the month, there were 1078 births.

In April 2020, when the Covid-19 deaths started, Kurnool reported just 53 deaths. In the last four months of 2021, a period that also saw the second wave of the pandemic, 2,419 deaths were registered.

Ironically, the district as a whole registered just 811 deaths due to Covid19 ever since the deaths caused by Coronavirus started to be registered. The skewed nature of the data collected by KMC needs to be reviewed, said a retired bureaucrat.

Kurnool was one of the first cities hit by Covid infections in the state following the arrival of the Tablighi Jama-ath return-ees from Delhi. During the first blow, the city lost some famous doctors and frontline workers.

The birth-death data revealed by the KMC now confirmed the fears of massive deaths due to the pandemic, more than reported by official agencies, said a resident in Ganigalli, the cramped locality in the old city that bore the brunt of Covid-19 and lost many lives.

Kurnool Government General Hospital (KGGH) that has been converted into a full-service Covid hospital with all its 1,200 beds witnessed at least 30 deaths every day.

The hospital superintendent G. Narendranath Reddy said as per the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) guidelines, deaths are classified as primary, secondary, and tertiary.

“Though the number of deaths remai-ned high, we are classifying them as Covid deaths when the death occurred only due to Covid infection,” Reddy said.

“If the patient had other ailments like cancer, cardiac-related diseases, or any other co-morbidity, even though such patients got admitted to hospital due to Covid-19, his death was not classified as due to Covid19. That is the reason why the medical bulletin showed less number of deaths,” Reddy said.

District Medical and Health Officer (DMHO) Dr Rama Giddaiah rejected the KMC data and said the abnormal death cases in May were improbable. He said the Covid bulletin issued by the state government was accurate as far as this district was concerned.

KGGH superintendent G. Narendranath Reddy noted that there are several private nursing homes in the KMC area. Most of the deaths could have happened there. Dr Praveen, a private nursing home doctor, however, said the deaths were abnormally higher in the second wave in the last three months