JOIN USSenior citizens, kids with comorbidities make up majority of Bengaluru's hospitalised Covid cases
Hospitalisations for Covid-19 are increasingly becoming dominated by senior citizens, although official data also points to certain anomalies such as children ending up in intensive care units (ICUs).
Out of 455 active hospitalisations in the city as of Tuesday night, the bulk (148 or 32%) are those aged 60 and above, followed by 104 individuals (22.8%) who aged between 41 and 60. A further 98 hospitalisations were among people aged 19 to 40.
But the remaining 10 cases include children aged 0 to 18. Among these were three children in the ICU.
Dr Thrilok Chandra, Special Commissioner (Health), Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), said all paediatric cases have serious comorbidities, which complicated their conditions.
“Two of the children in an ICU bed are aged 14 and 17 and both suffer from chronic kidney disease. The third child, a nine-year-old with acute appendicitis, is in an ICU-ventilator bed,” Dr Chandra said, specifying that routine testing had uncovered the positive cases.
“The discovery of Covid-19, in their case, happens to be 'incidental' as it is with so many cases of hospitalisation that we are coming across,” he added.
Curiously, the data also pointed to two adult individuals who had been in a general bed for over 21 days.
The BBMP said this is due to the fact that both cases had stepped up to a High-Dependency Unit bed before recently being stepped down back to a general bed.
“They suffer from severe comorbidities or other health conditions,” Dr Chandra said.
BBMP data
Meanwhile, in a review meeting held on Wednesday on the current situation, BBMP Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta said Covid admissions contributed only about 1.8% active cases.
“It has been instructed to closely monitor ICU admissions. Critical bed admissions samples will be sent for genomic sequence. At present, all such samples are closely monitored,” he said.
The BBMP also added the average duration of hospitalisation is between five to seven days. Out of some 4,001 hospitalisations that happened between January 17 and February 1, approximately 10% are said to be paediatric hospitalisations.
Some 25% of all adult hospitalisations go into general beds, with another 34% going into HDU beds, as per BBMP data.
“About 60% of hospitalisations are people who have been vaccinated at least once,” Dr Chandra said.
“About 40%of ICU cases are also vaccinated at least once or twice. It is possible that most ICU cases are people with the Delta variant.”
Some 126 of these active hospitalisations were discharged on Wednesday, bringing hospitalisation numbers down to 329.
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