HYDERABAD: Telangana state has been witnessing an increasing number of Covid-19 patients being hospitalised with their number nearly quadrupling in the last two weeks of February from just 27 on February 13 to 95 on February 28. This has resulted in some officials of the health department scratching their heads even as some senior doctors have said that they are seeing some Covid-19 patients taking longer to recover than in the past.
Health department’s doctors when contacted could not pinpoint any causes for the rising hospitalisations in Telangana. The rise in such cases has been steady since February 13.
There has also been a slow rise in the daily Covid-19 cases as per the Covid bulletin released every day by the state Health Department, though the rise has not been alarming. Repeated efforts to contact the Director of Public Health and Family Welfare Dr G Srinivasa Rao on the rising hospitalizations among Covid faces did not succeed.
Meanwhile, in what could be a worrisome outcome of general laxity over Covid-19 in the state, labs testing people for Covid, are learnt to have stopped sending their positive samples for genome sequencing leaving everyone in the dark if there are any genetic changes in the current variant.
Genome sequencing labs in the city, according to sources, have not been getting samples from positive Covid-19 patients. The sources said there is little that can be done by these labs under the current circumstances.
“This is an early warning system we should use to identify if any genetic modifications are occurring in the virus, and if any variants are in the making,” Dr Ranga Reddy Burri, president of Infection Control Academy of India said. “There was a time when the genome sequencing facilities were overwhelmed. Now they are idling. We should use this opportunity to send every positive sample to confirm the diagnosis, and to identify any genetic changes in the virus,” he said.
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