Ahmedabad, Modi's City, Worse Record

Though Delhi and Mumbai might seem to be worst off with the highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths each day, Ahmedabad with less than half the population of these metros has the highest deaths per million population in the country. It also has the highest case fatality rate (CFR) — number of deaths per 100 cases — among the nine megapolises with populations of over 5 million. 

At 115 deaths per million, Ahmedabad is much worse than Mumbai in second place with 80 deaths per million. Among the top metros, Bangalore seems to be doing the best with just one death per million. When it comes to CFR, Chennai’s 0.9 is the lowest among the nine mega cities. The data is as of Friday morning. 

The comparison here is between the nine urban agglomerations — cities and their urban outgrowths, like Greater Mumbai or Greater Kolkata — in the country that has 5 million or more people living in them. 

A low CFR is often seen as a result of extensive testing and hence detecting of a large number of positive cases. The higher the number of positive cases, the denominator, the smaller the CFR would be. Ahmedabad’s CFR of 6.9 has been explained by many as the result of inadequate testing. But the city’s deaths per million figure suggests shows there is more to the poor handling of Covid cases than just inadequate testing. 

Even in absolute numbers, Ahmedabad which has recorded 953 deaths is second only to the Mumbai with 1,698 deaths. Delhi follows Mumbai with 650 deaths. Bangalore has recorded just 14 deaths so far and the least number of cases, just 428. 

Though many cities have been trying to draw comfort from their recovery rates, epidemiologists have repeatedly pointed out that in an infection like Covid where over 90% of those infected are expected to recover, the share of those recovering can only rise steadily with the passage of time and hence recovery rates are a misleading measure for progress in the fight against the disease. 

These nine urban agglomerations contribute over 1.3 lakh cases (nearly 60% of India’s total) and 4,299 deaths, over two-thirds of the country’s total. An urban agglomeration (UA) is continuous urban habitation that surrounds a city or the continuous geographical stretch of two or more cities which in many ways function as the same city. 

Mumbai UA for instance is constituted by the Municipal Corporations of Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivali, Ulhasnagar and Mira Bhayandar. Similarly Kolkata UA spreads over the districts of Kolkata, North and South 24 Parganas, Hooghly and Howrah. Chennai UA has Chennai, Thiruvallur and Kancheepuram while Hydarabad UA includes Hyderabad, Rangareddy and Medak. Ahmedabad UA also includes Gandhinagar. 

The 2020 population estimates for these UAs from the United Nation’s World Urbanisation Prospects was used to calculate the deaths per million. The census of India does not include Delhi’s satellite districts like Ghaziabad and Gurgaon in the Delhi UA and hence Delhi’s cases as well as population are only for Delhi state or the city of Delhi. Delhi’s 2020 population is taken from the census population projections for states. 

The above is from TOI