With a rise in COVID-19 deaths and the State Death Audit Committee’s analysis that most of those who died since December 15 are due to poor management of their comorbidities and complications arising out of it, the Health Department has sought the COVID-19 Technical Advisory Committee’s (TAC) opinion on suitable clinical protocols for such patients.
The TAC that met on Thursday - ahead of the Cabinet sub-committee’s second meeting scheduled to be held on Friday - discussed this along with the need to focus on targeted treatment of comorbidities.
“With a low hospitalisation rate, there is adequate availability of COVID beds in government hospitals designated for COVID treatment. Those with comorbidities who test positive for COVID should be admitted for treatment without any delay. Following deliberations, the TAC is likely to make suitable recommendations regarding this,” sources said.
Four more deaths were reported on Thursday taking the total number of deaths since mid December to 20. The Death Audit Committee that had analysed ten of these deaths till January 1 had found COVID to be an incidental finding in nine deaths.
State Health Commissioner Randeep D. told The Hindu that early and proper triaging in comorbid COVID-19 patients is very important in light of the Death Audit committee’s analysis. “We have sought the TAC’s opinion on how the existing clinical protocols can be aligned to suit the present COVID scenario. People need not panic as although the JN.1 sub-variant is highly transmissible, the virulence is not high,” he said.
Besides, the TAC has also been asked to recommend if the existing COVID testing and whole genome sequencing (WGS) strategies need to be revised, the Commissioner said. As of Thursday, the State has reported 199 JN.1 cases (76% of the 262 samples whose WGS results are available so far).
PHANA’s suggestions
“The Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Association (PHANA) has suggested that masks should be made mandatory in public places, especially in the international airport. They have also said that testing should be done at the airport too. I have referred this to the TAC,” Mr. Randeep said.
PHANA president Govindaiah Yateesh said the association recently submitted a memorandum to the Health Minister extending support to the government in handling the JN.1 surge. “As of now the situation is not alarming. However, in the event of a surge, private hospitals will abide by the government’s decision in all aspects including bed allotment,” he said.
Four more deaths
Karnataka on Thursday reported four more COVID deaths taking the total number of deaths reported since December 15 to 20. The four deceased include a 60-year-old female from Mysuru diagnosed with SARI. She was admitted to a government hospital on December 28 and died on January 3. She is the only female patient among the 20 who died so far.
The other three include a 82-year-old and 64-year-old male patients from Bengaluru and a 63-year-old male from Dharwad. All of them were diagnosed with SARI or ILI. All the four had comorbidities.
With 298 new cases, the total number of active cases in the State touched 1,240. Of these, 72 patients have been admitted to various hospitals. While nine of these patients are on oxygen support, nine are being treated in ICUs and three on ventilator support.
As many as 7,791 tests were done in the last 24 hours including 6,900 RTPCR tests. With this, the day’s test positivity rate (TPR) stood at 3.82%.
