The majority of persons hospitalised due to Covid-19 have been found to be unvaccinated with a number of comorbidities, which put them at a higher risk.
This was revealed by Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, during his Covid-19 update on Friday.
“What we are finding about the persons who are becoming hospitalised now, they would have a lot of comorbidities, some of them don’t just have one underlying illness, but they have several underlying illnesses. Secondly, most of the people who are now coming in to hospitals have not been vaccinated, and of recent too, we have noticed a lot of elderly people who are coming into the hospital who are unvaccinated and with comorbidities,” Dr. Anthony said.
The Minister noted that these persons are more at risk of dying.
“These are all risk factors and because of that we have found that a lot of these patients don’t do too well, and they are at risk of dying if they get Covid,” he noted.
The Health Minister noted that long Covid does exist, as was seen with previous variants of the respiratory illness, however, how long Covid will affect those infected with Omicron is still to be observed, as the variant was only discovered in November of 2021. He said hospitalisation is shorter with this variant.
“With Omicron, the acute phase has been shorter and even for hospitalization. When we were looking at between 10-14 days, we have now seen most patients spending probably about 5-17 days, so the time for the interval of hospitalisation, in many ways have been reduced,” the Minister noted.
Meanwhile, a special unit was set up at the Georgetown Public Hospital to attend to patients with long Covid.
“It has been established and they have been reviewing these patients and treating them, and obviously if we have patients in other areas of the country, we would want to replicate it and if those doctors believe, they can’t manage those patients there, they will refer them to the Georgetown Hospital,” Dr. Anthony said. [Extracted and Modified from DPI]
