3 min readMumbaiJun 28, 2022 12:33 AM IST
First published on: Jun 28, 2022 at 12:33 AM IST
Re-establishing the need for vaccination, the latest genome sequencing report of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has revealed that Covid-related mortality is higher among unvaccinated patients.
Out of the 269 patients whose samples were taken for sequencing, 107 or 39.7 per cent were unvaccinated. Of these, five required admission in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and three lost their lives. On the other hand, among the eight patients who had taken one dose and 154 patients who were fully vaccinated, no death was recorded.
The requirement of treatment in ICU was also found to be less among partially and fully-vaccinated patients. Only one patient who had taken both the doses of the vaccines needed admission in the ICU.
“In the genome-sequencing report, we witnessed that the severity of infection was much higher among unvaccinated patients. This group of patients also needed more time for recovery. This again highlights the need for vaccination, especially among the elderly with comorbidities,” said Dr Mangala Gomare, Executive Health Officer, BMC.
Echoing similar view, Dr Rahul Pandit, member of the Covid-19 task force, said that vaccines don’t provide shield against infection but lower the severity which contains the mortality rate. “Vaccines will confer sterilising immunity in everyone. They provide us immunity against severe diseases and mortality. These are generation one vaccines made from the ancestral strain; it has never been claimed that vaccinated people will never get infected. Also, if one gets infected, chances are that they will be asymptomatic or have minor symptoms,” he said.
Since the surge in Covid-19, the civic body has been sending naso-oropharyngeal positive sample from hospitalised patients as well as people testing positive in dispensaries and laboratories for genome sequencing.
As per the 13th genome-sequencing report, out of the total samples collected, 268 or 99.63 per cent were detected with variants of Omicron. Of these, six and 12 patients were detected with the new variant of Omicron—BA.4 and BA.5 — respectively.
A total of 60.59 per cent (163) Covid-19 patients found positive with the Omicron variant were in the age bracket of 21-60 of which 40 per cent (108) were in the 21 to 40 age group. Around 10.78 per cent (29) were in the 0-18 age group.
On Monday, the state registered a total of 2,369 new Covid-19 cases, of which Mumbai constituted 1,062 cases. The state capital registered five more deaths which pushed up the total mortality to 37 as of June 27.
A health worker administers Covid-19 vaccine to a beneficiary in Mumbai. (Express file photo) 
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