The third COVID wave surge in India saw younger population as patients with lesser proportions of all symptoms and higher level of co-morbidities, Indian Council of Medical Research chief, Dr Balram Bhargava said on Thursday 3 February.

According to the data collected of hospitalised people in 37 different hospitals across India which did the plasma study during the first and second surge and which are part of the National COVID Clinical Registry, the Omicron surge saw younger in-patients of 44 years as opposed to 55 years earlier, whereas a comparison of co-morbidities stood at 46 percent versus the 66 percent earlier.

Dr Bhargava said that 10 percent of the deaths due to the Omicron variant had happened in vaccinated people who ended up in hospitals, as compared with 22 percent in those who were not vaccinated against COVID.

About 91 percent of those vaccinated who died due to infection had co-morbidities, against 83 percent of those unvaccinated who succumbed to the infectious disease.

The comparative study was conducted in two different time frame from 15 November to 16 December, when Delta was the predominant variant and between 16 December to 17 January, when Omicron variant was.

These included 564 hospitalised due to Delta and 956 hospitalised due to Omicron.

(This story was published from a syndicated feed. Only the headline and picture has been edited by FIT)