India reports more than 20 Covid deaths for 2nd consecutive day

NEW DELHI: With 21 fatalities confirmed by 11 states and Union territories on Saturday, India has reported more than 20 Covid deaths for the second consecutive day. Delhi alone reported six deaths due to the disease, followed by Maharashtra where four people died due to Covid.
Rajasthan recorded three Covid-19 fatalities and one death each was reported from Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh due to Covid-19. Kerala reconciled six previous deaths, taking the total death toll in the country to 5,31,091. On Friday, 20 Covid deaths were recorded across the country and nine deaths were reconciled by Kerala.
The number of active infections in the country stands at 53,720 with 10,753 fresh Covid-19 cases, according to Union health ministry data. "The number of cases being reported currently are low because many people aren't getting tested. But, we are gradually seeing an increase in hospitalisations, especially among the elderly and those with co-morbidities," said a senior doctor, who heads the internal medicine division at a leading private hospital chain based in Delhi NCR.
She added that adoption of Covid-appropriate behaviour including wearing masks in crowded, closed spaces is urgently needed to arrest infection spread. In the current surge, doctors say severe throat infection with sinusitis, Running nose, muscle pain, extreme weakness and loss of appetite are common in adults. Among children, conjunctivitis with pain abdomen and gastroenteritis is being seen. "We aren't seeing to many patients complaining about low oxygen saturation which was the most concerning complications during the second wave of the pandemic," Dr Suresh Kumar, medical director of Delhi's Lok Nayak hospital, said.
The health ministry recently said Covid-19 in India is moving towards an endemic stage. An endemic refers to a disease outbreak which is consistently present but is limited to a particular region which makes it more predictable and manageable.
According to the officials, even though the Covid-19 cases are increasing, hospitalisation is low and it is expected to remain low. The health ministry officials said, as per their assessment, the cases may keep rising for the next 10-12 days after which they will begin to subside.
As the virus becomes endemic, it generates a large number of variants. Omicron, which was first detected in 2021, has been assigned over 1,000 sub-lineages since its detection including XBB.1.16 and XBB.1.5. Dr N K Arora, co-chair of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (Insacog), said XBB.1.16 is causing a surge in cases but hospitalisations haven't gone up and even the deaths being attributed to the disease are mostly among people who have serious co-morbidities. Nonetheless, he added, the biological behaviour of the virus cannot be predicted and therefore continued surveillance of hospitalisations due to Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) was needed.