Data from hospitals suggest that the proportion of Covid patients who are fully vaccinated but still in need of critical care is less than those who are unvaccinated, underlining the need to further speed up the jab drive.
Most Covid patients in the ICUs are either unvaccinated or have taken only one dose, said officials of these hospitals.
As the vaccination drive is progressing and an increasing number of the population is getting vaccinated, the proportion of Covid patients who have taken at least one dose is also going up, said health department officials.
Doctors and health officials said the trend showed how important it was to further ramp up vaccination to keep a check on the number of critical patients in the event of a third wave.
On Wednesday, Peerless Hospital had 24 Covid patients, including seven in the intensive therapy unit. “Three of these seven patients have received both doses. They are elderly and have comorbidities but are stable,” said Sudipta Mitra, the chief executive of Peerless Hospital.
Of the 17 in the general ward, eight are fully vaccinated.
The trend has remained the same for the last few weeks.
The RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences had eight Covid patients, four of whom were in the critical care unit.
“Two of the four in the critical care unit have received double doses. They are not severely critical and have been kept in the ICU mainly because they need monitoring,” said R. Venkatesh, regional director, east, Narayana Health, of which the RN Tagore hospital is the flagship unit.
Belle Vue Clinic on Wednesday had 10 Covid patients, half of whom were in the ICU. All five in the ICU are partially vaccinated, while those in the ward have got both doses,” said Pradip Tondon, the CEO of the hospital.
AMRI Hospitals had 35 Covid patients admitted in its units in Dhakuria, Salt Lake and Mukundapur. An official of the group said 15 patients were in critical care units and three of them were fully vaccinated.
The government-run MR Bangur Superspeciality Hospital had 80 patients, of whom 30 were in the ICU. An official of the hospital said the majority of the patients were unvaccinated and a few had single doses.
The ILS group had 11 patients in its three units, including four in the ICU. Two of the critical patients have received a single dose and the other two are unvaccinated.
“The number of Covid patients coming to the hospital has come down because of the vaccination drive. Many patients coming to the hospital with Covid symptoms are initially admitted in the suspected Covid ward, where the majority are testing negative,” said Debashish Dhar, group vice-president, ILS Hospitals.
Doctors said this showed the vaccines were effective in limiting severity among Covid patients.
“It is known that the vaccines we have access to, such as Covishield and Covaxin, are giving protection from getting infected. However, but more importantly, these are giving protection from developing severe symptoms,” said Chandramouli Bhattacharya, consultant in tropical medicine and infectious diseases.
