The vast majority of Covid-19 patients requiring oxygen support in Mumbai’s hospitals are not vaccinated, a senior city official said, providing the first clue as to who may now be at higher risk, despite the change. The body itself shows signs of reduced virulence.

Doctors at city officials separately said the trends were largely being reflected at their facilities, and that most of those requiring additional support were unvaccinated people above the age of 50.

“Out of the around 1,900 Covid patients who were on oxygenated beds, around 96% are unvaccinated and only 4% are vaccinated,” Brihanmumbai Corporation (BMC) municipal commissioner Iqbal Chahal, citing data till January 6.

Dr Gautam Bhansali of Mumbai Hospital, who is also the coordinator of all private hospitals in the city, said: “In the case of hospital beds, both vaccinated and unvaccinated citizens are occupants, but on oxygen beds, most patients are unvaccinated Vaccines. The age group of such patients is usually 40 to 50 years old.”

“It shows how important vaccination is for every citizen,” he added.

Infectious disease expert Dr Om Srivastava, who is also a member of the Covid-19 task force, said there has been a marked increase in the number of unvaccinated and partially vaccinated people hospitalized with Covid-19. “After the surge in cases, many of these patients appear to be rushing to get vaccinated, perhaps battling initial hesitancy to vaccinate,” Srivastava said. “We haven’t done a thorough analysis,” he said. , but even with oxygen support and intensive care units, the number of such patients is increasing.”

According to Srivastava, Omicron is largely affecting the upper respiratory area and patients suspected with Omicron may not require oxygen. While the presence of Omicron is confirmed by genome sequencing, some hospitals have started using the S-gene dropout parameter in the RT-PCR tests to indirectly indicate the variant causing the disease in the patient.

“My worry is about the possibility of joint infections with both Delta and Omicron variants due to repeated exposure that could be driving some number of patients towards severe disease. We don’t have genome sequencing data to establish this, but it definitely needs to be looked at,” he said.

BMC officials said they were confident that resources are adequate to deal with any surge in requirement.

“We may even have 100,000 Covid active patients in Mumbai. Our oxygen consumption is only 10 tonnes. Our production capacity is up to 200 tonnes a day. We have another 400 tonnes of oxygen in storage. In the third wave, we have to understand that positivity rate or cases will not be parameter with which to gauge the situation but hospitalisation rate. The occupation of oxygen and ICU beds along with the overall bed occupancy rate is to be gauged,” said an official, asking not to be named.

Chahal said 80% of the city’s Covid beds were not occupied and the situation would be reviewed if 50% occupancy was reached in the next few days.

“Experts from the Covid task force told me that in Mumbai, there may even be an increase of 40,000 cases a day. This may or may not happen, but we will come out of this easily, given the cooperation of the citizens,” he said.

Complete News Source : Hindustan Times