Omicron wave in India: Most common symptom, which age group was more infected?

Addressing a press conference, ICMR DG Balram Bhargava said that in the third wave, sore throat was seen more in patients and a slightly younger population with an average age of 44 years was more infected than the previous ones.

In earlier waves, Bhargava said, the average age of a section of the infected population was 55 years.

The findings were drawn from the National Clinical Registry of COVID, which collected data on hospitalized patients from 37 medical facilities.

Bhargava said that he studied two periods. One was November 15 to December 15, which was considered to be dominated by delta stress, and the other was from December 16 to January 17, when the predicted dominant strain was Omicron,” he said.

Bhargava said 1,520 hospitalized individuals were analysed, and their average age during this third surge was around 44 years, a slightly lower population.

He further added that the co-morbidities present in this young population were quite high. “About 46% had co-morbidities, these are people who are younger … but about half of them had some co-morbidities and had very few symptoms. But the dominant symptoms, which were higher in this population during January period, there was a sore throat. Sore throat was more common than in earlier periods,” he said.

The ICMR DG said that they also found that “during this boom there was significantly less use of drugs and significantly better outcomes with far fewer complications of renal failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and others.” “

The mortality rate was 10% in vaccinated people and 22% in non-vaccinated people. “In vaccinated versus non-vaccinated, mortality was 10% (91 percent co-morbidity) versus 22% (83 percent co-morbidity). So actually nine out of 10 had a co-morbidity in this young population that died and Vaccinated.”

Of the non-vaccinated people, 83% had co-morbidities. So non-vaccination and co-morbidities are actually the drivers that decide the course of the patient, Bhargava said.