56% of Covid-19 patients with secondary infection die: ICMR study

Many patients needed potent antibiotics as they had superbugs and couldn't be treated with regular ones.

More than half of Covid-19 patients who develop a secondary bacterial or fungal infection die in India, said a study by a state-run institute that the 'Times of India' quoted on Friday.

Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) studied patients with secondary infections admitted in intensive care units (ICUs) and wards of 10 hospitals between June and August 2020.

According to its study, some Covid-19 patients develop a secondary bacterial or fungal infection during or after Covid-19 treatment. Out of the 17,534 patients studied, 3.6% developed a secondary bacterial or fungal infection and the mortality among these patients was 56.7%.

The drug-resistant variants of Klebsiella pneumonia, Acinetobacter baumannii and pseudomonas aeruginosa were among the most common bacterial infections.

The mortality rate was manifold in case of secondary infections as against the overall mortality of Covid-19 patients admitted at hospitals.

"Extrapolating these numbers to the overall Covid-19 hospitalisations shows that lakhs of people must have had a prolonged hospital stay, needing a higher dose of antibiotics to stave off hospitalisation-acquired infections that typically develop after 10 days,” ICMR senior scientist Kamini Walia, who led the study, was quoted by the Times as saying,

The study added many patients needed potent antibiotics as they had superbugs and couldn’t be treated with regular antibiotics. Many of these potent antibiotics are on the watchlist of the WHO and are meant to be used judiciously.