Despite a steady surge in cases, Karnataka has recorded nearly a fourfold rise in recoveries in the last one week. On Tuesday, the number of recoveries exceeded new cases for the first time in the third wave with 53,093 people getting discharged.
On Monday, the State recorded 41,703 recoveries. Previously, 35,140 recoveries were recorded on January 22. In fact, the number of people recovering saw a steep rise from January 19 onwards. From 8,353 recoveries on January 18, it shot up to 23,209 on January 19. Since then, the State has been reporting over 20,000 recoveries.
Following this, the weekly recovery rate has shot up from 14.36% (last week) to 52.13% (this week) in the State as of January 24. While Dakshina Kannada has the highest weekly recovery rate at 77.97%, Chickballapur has the lowest at 20.93%, according to data from the State War Room.
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Till January 24, 70,609 infected persons of the total 3,59,074 active cases were undergoing treatment for more than seven days. These include 50,487 under home isolation, 3,317 in hospitals and 274 in COVID Care centres (CCCs).
Mild infections
As of January 24, only 1.44% of the total 3,62,487 active cases in the State have been hospitalised, indicating that the disease severity is not as high as it was during the second wave.
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Experts, who pointed out that the infection has largely been mild during this wave, said infected people are generally recovering within a week.
The few who are requiring treatment beyond seven days are those with comorbidities and the elderly.
C.N. Manjunath, nodal officer for labs and testing in the State’s COVID-19 task force and member of the State’s Clinical Experts Committee, said the duration of infection has largely been between three to five days during the third wave mainly because there is no lung involvement. “It is because of this that people are getting discharged within a week. Earlier, people used to be under treatment for seven to 10 days as many developed shortness of breath and needed oxygen,” he said.
Asserting that steroids are not being used in the treatment of COVID-19 patients now, Dr. Manjunath said: “As the disease severity is low, managing comorbidities, especially diabetes is easier. However, people should be watchful post recovery and look out for symptoms such as shortness of breath, undue tiredness. Because there are chances of some people developing reinfection,” he added.
S.N. Aravinda, Consultant - Internal Medicine at Aster RV Hospital said, “Most of the cases we are seeing are mild infections. Cases where the recovery time is increasing could potentially be a different variant such as Delta.”
Other factors that could be leading to prolonged recovery time could be severely compromised immune system or other comorbidities. Longer recovery time could also be a sign of long COVID-19 where the major part of the illness has been overcome but other symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog, etc. still persist.
However, K.V. Trilok Chandra, BBMP Special Commissioner (Health) said not many long COVID-19 cases are being seen during this wave.
Patients under both home isolation and hospitals are recovering fast and as of January 24 only 138 people in the State are on ventilators, he said.