Nearly 96 per cent of people who are on
oxygen support in Mumbai’s hospitals turned out to be unvaccinated, some of
them didn’t even take a single dose, said a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation
(BMC) official. This fact revealed who may now be at higher risk of contracting COVID-19.  The official also said most
of these unvaccinated people are above 50.

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“Out of the around 1,900 Covid patients who
were on oxygenated beds, around 96% are unvaccinated and only 4% are
vaccinated,” said BMC commissioner Iqbal
Chahal, citing data, reported Hindustan Times.  

 “In
case of hospital beds, both vaccinated and unvaccinated citizens are occupants,
but on oxygen beds, the majority of patients are unvaccinated. The age group of
such patients is normally above 40 to 50 years,” said Dr Gautam Bhansali of the
Bombay Hospital, who is also a coordinator of all private hospitals in the
city.

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“This shows that vaccination is very
important for each and every citizen,” he added.

Dr Om Srivastava, an infectious disease
expert and also a member of the COVID-19 task force, said that there is a huge
number of unvaccinated and partially vaccinated people who were being
hospitalised with COVID-19 infection. “Many of these patients seem to have
rushed to take the vaccine after the surge in cases started, perhaps battling
the initial hesitancy towards vaccination,” said Srivastava. “We have not
conducted a thorough analysis, but the uptick in such patients, even on oxygen
support and ICUs is visible,” he said.

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Dr Srivastava also said the omicron variant
of coronavirus is largely affecting the upper respiratory area and patients
suspected with omicron may not require oxygen.

“My worry is about the possibility of joint
infections with both Delta and Omicron variants due to repeated exposure that
could be driving some number of patients towards severe disease. We don’t have
genome sequencing data to establish this, but it definitely needs to be looked
at,” he said.

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BMC ready to deal with surge in demand for oxygen

BMC officials, meanwhile, said they have
adequate resources to deal with the surge in demand for oxygen.

“We may even have 100,000 Covid active
patients in Mumbai. Our oxygen consumption is only 10 tonnes. Our production
capacity is up to 200 tonnes a day. We have another 400 tonnes of oxygen in
storage. In the third wave, we have to understand that positivity rate or cases
will not be parameter with which to gauge the situation but hospitalisation
rate. The occupation of oxygen and ICU beds along with the overall bed
occupancy rate is to be gauged,” said an official on condition of anonymity.