According to statistics from the Union Health Ministry, almost one in five patients, or 17.9 per cent of people with so-called comorbidities who acquire coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India, succumbed to viral disease.
The equivalent percentage is 1.2 per cent for people with no underlying medical problems. This indicates that if those with co-morbidities are infected with Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, they are 15 times more probable to suffer than those without underlying disorders.
Comorbidity applies to the occurrence of different medical problems in the same person. Getting disorders such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiac, liver, or kidney failure, in the case of Covid-19, raises the risk of a patient contracting a more extreme type of illness and of death.
While the results on the higher case fatality rate (CFR) for people with comorbidities are mostly in line with what scientists have found around the world, it’s the first time the government has published data indicating the connexion among fatality & comorbidities in India.
A research released in June by the federal agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC) across the Us, the only nation with more reported Covid-19 infections than India, found that 19.5 per cent of people with underlying diseases died relative to 1.6 per cent of those who were well, proportions that are remarkably similar to India’s.
In India, the highest variance in the two classes (those with and without comorbidities) was recorded among persons over the age of 60, where almost a quarter (24.6%) of others with underlying disorders died versus one in 20 patients (4.8%) without any.
Among patients with comorbidities, the CFR was 13.9 per cent for people aged 45 and 60 years of age, compared with 1.5 per cent for those without.
For both groups, patients under the age of 45 years had the highest CFR, 8.8 per cent for those with underlying conditions and 0.2 per cent for stable people; the health ministry said that during the weekly Covid-19 briefing on Tuesday.
Experts said comorbidities in Covid-19 patients would seriously hinder the rehabilitation. In severe Covid-19 patients, comorbid disorders such as cardiac, kidney or liver problems or diabetes, etc. greatly hinder the healing process.
It also requires longer to recover for Covid-19 patients with existing medical problems, especially those with untreated illness,’ said Dr Vikas Maurya, Fortis Hospital’s Head of Respiratory Medicine and Interventional Pulmonology.
The Ministry of Health has presented new statistics on the nation’s age- and gender-specific breakdown of fatalities. For somebody over 45 years of age, about 88 per cent of Covid-19 deaths occurred for those over 45, with those over 60 making up the highest share of fatalities (53 per cent). About 70% of the deaths came from male patients, the health ministry stated.
