This story is from January 21, 2022

Kolkata: Rise in Covid pneumonia patients prompts hospital concern over emerging variants

Doctors are seeing a steady rise in the number of patients being admitted to ICU with Covid pneumonia over the past couple of days.
Kolkata: Rise in Covid pneumonia patients prompts hospital concern over emerging variants
(Picture for representation)
KOLKATA: Doctors are seeing a steady rise in the number of patients being admitted to ICU with Covid pneumonia over the past couple of days.
While Delta-like symptoms have been noticed in them, some hospitals have requested the health department to carry out random genome sequencing of their samples to confirm whether their variants are Delta, Omicron or a yet new strain.
“In the past four to five days, I have been coming across an increasing number of patients coming in with bad Covid. Currently, four of them, including a patient in his late 40s, are on ventilation and three on high oxygen requirement. We know about 80% cases are now Omicron and the rest are Delta, but we need to keep an eye out for new variants. That is why we have sent request for genome sequencing on a few samples,” said pulmonologist Raja Dhar of CMRI.
Doctors pointed out most patients in the ICU were with comorbidities and incidental Covid, but the number of patients with Covid pneumonia was also rising. “Not all landing up in ICU are with stroke or cardiac patients with incidental Covid. Some are coming in with Covid pneumonia, requiring significant amount of oxygen and their number has started climbing,” said Sushmita Roy Chowdhury, pulmonologist at Fortis Hospital.
Even if patients have Delta-like symptoms, what worries doctors is the rising number amid Omicron dominance. “We really do not know whether it is Delta or Omicron, which is causing the pneumonia at a later stage. Therefore, we have also requested for whole genome sequencing on the samples of a few of these patients,” said Roy Chowdhury.
Peerless Hospital CEO Sudipta Mitra also said they were getting cases of positive patients coming with decreased oxygen saturation and persistant high-grade fever that looked like Delta symptoms.
Currently, whole genome sequencing is being done only on positive samples of patients with international travel history. The decision to sequence all samples from the community below 30 CT value from Kolkata was withdrawn within a week in December-end. But the state is likely to start sending random samples from Covid patients with severe diseases. “Whether it is Delta or Omicron, treatment will stay broadly the same. We should not miss out on any emerging variant and hence genome sequencing from random samples will help with public health policy,” said critical care specialist Saswati Sinha of AMRI Dhakuria.
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