Covid deaths: '71% patients detected with comorbidities'

Kolkata: Around 71.4 per cent of the total patients who died in various hospitals after being diagnosed with COVID-19 were found to have various comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes or cardiac ailments.

State health department's data says that out of the total deaths of 518, as many as 370 patients had been suffering from various other critical ailments. All these ailments led to the fatality. Only 148 deceased patients had no serious ailments. The state government had earlier stressed upon the point as to how a large number of people died due to comorbidities accompanied with Coronavirus.

The health department says among the male patients who have died after being treated at various hospitals, around 25.32 per cent of them had hypertension while 20.04 per cent patients had diabetes and 16.88 per cent patients had been suffering from cardiac diseases. Around 11.6 per cent of the male deceased had chronic kidney disease (CKD) and 6.96 per cent chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD). While among female deceased, around 27.78 per cent were suffering from hypertension, diabetes 20.71 per cent, cardiac diseases 15.15 per cent, CKD 12.63 per cent and COPD 3.03 per cent.

It may be mentioned here that there are a total 10,313 beds in the COVID designated hospitals in the state out of which 8225 beds are still vacant. It means around 80 per cent of the total COVID beds are still vacant. It signifies that the COVID hospitals across the state are ready to handle the situation if there is further surge in the patients.

Meanwhile, the state health department has issued advisory to the authorities of all the government run medical colleges functioning as tertiary COVID care centers across the state asking them to run all the departments normally so that the medical students do not face any difficulties. The medical colleges have also been asked to operate the multi-disciplinary services apart from dedicated COVID ward so that the corona affected patients with other ailments of different disciplines get adequate treatment.

The functioning of various departments in a COVID designated medical college is required as the critical COVD patients often require the intervention of various medical disciplines.

The implementation and the planning of the advisory will be done by the medical colleges' authorities considering the interest of public services and academic requirements.