BHUBANESWAR: Like the previous waves senior citizens and people with comorbidities have fallen to Covid-19 in the current phase of the pandemic. But those who have taken the booster dose have survived and fought well with the evolved variants of the SARS-CoV-2.
An analysis of recent Covid fatalities in the State revealed that around 80 per cent (pc) of the victims who succumbed to the disease in the last one month had not taken the precautionary dose.
So far, 16 persons, aged 32 to 85 years, have died of Covid-19. Barring one 75-year-old woman from the Jajpur district, all others were suffering from comorbidities such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, anaemia, and chronic liver and kidney diseases. The deceased included seven women. While five were from Bhubaneswar and three from Puri, two were from Bhadrak and one each from Cuttack, Balasore, Angul and Sundargarh.
Four people have succumbed to Covid in the last three days and if Health department sources are to be believed the audit is pending for at least 10 more deaths that took place in the last few days. Director of Health Services Dr Bijay Mohapatra said Covid vaccines are working well to prevent severe illness, hospitalisation and death.
“The booster has reduced disease severity even in comorbid senior citizens. Most of the Covid-positive people aged above 60 years who died recently had not taken the booster dose. We are analysing the death audit reports to ascertain the breakthrough cases,” he said and appealed to people to take the dose without any further delay.
Although the Centre had first announced a free booster dose for healthcare and frontline workers besides senior citizens in January, the coverage has been abysmally low among the senior citizens. According to the vaccination statistics, only 25 pc senior citizens in the State have taken the precautionary dose in the last seven months.
A whopping 30 pc of healthcare workers are also yet to take it. The booster coverage is only about 8 pc among the 18-59 years age group. Meanwhile, the State reported 741 new Covid cases and one death in the last 24 hours.