The third COVID wave surge in India saw younger population as patients with lesser proportions of all symptoms and higher level of co-morbidities, Indian Council of Medical Research chief, Dr Balram Bhargava said on Thursday 3 February.
The mean age of the younger hospitalised population during this third wave was about 44 years, he said, but added that the incident of co-morbidities was higher in this group, at close to half (46 percent).
According to the data collected of hospitalised people in 37 different hospitals across India which did the plasma study during the first and second surge and which are part of the National COVID Clinical Registry, the Omicron surge saw younger in-patients of 44 years as opposed to 55 years earlier, whereas a comparison of co-morbidities stood at 46 percent versus the 66 percent earlier.
The study also found the common symptoms, mainly sore throat, lesser use of drugs, and significantly improved outcomes.
Dr Bhargava said that 10 percent of the deaths due to the Omicron variant had happened in vaccinated people who ended up in hospitals, as compared with 22 percent in those who were not vaccinated against COVID.
About 91 percent of those vaccinated who died due to infection had co-morbidities, against 83 percent of those unvaccinated who succumbed to the infectious disease.
These results stressed that vaccines may be largely protecting people from severe COVID and deaths, said Dr Bhargava.
The comparative study was conducted in two different time frame from 15 November to 16 December, when Delta was the predominant variant and between 16 December to 17 January, when Omicron variant was.
These included 564 hospitalised due to Delta and 956 hospitalised due to Omicron.
(This story was published from a syndicated feed. Only the headline and picture has been edited by FIT)
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