Srinagar: Doctors have expressed concern over the high number of casualties due to COVID19, especially among the unvaccinated in Kashmir. Three people, all unvaccinated, lost battle with SARS-CoV2 in the past 48 hours at Chest Diseases Hospital here.
Two Srinagar residents and one from Poonch district, who were admitted at CD Hospital lost life between Monday and Tuesday. The deaths, a senior faculty member at GMC Srinagar said, bring to fore the risks that many people in J&K are still at risk due to the lack of vaccination. While detailing, the faculty member said, a 64 year old male patient from Srinagar was admitted to the hospital with Respiratory Failure and Kidney Injury, both caused by SARS-CoV2 infection. He said the patient had severe COVID19 pneumonia and although he was not very aged, was “unfortunately unvaccinated”.
Another fatality, he said, was of a 70-year old male from district Srinagar. He said that the patient, in spite of suffering from Chronic Kidney Diseases (CKD) and Hypertension, had not been vaccinated and suffered respiratory failure due to COVID19. “It has been a year since we are trying to make people understand that those with pre-existing diseases are at a higher risk of death due to COVID19,” he said, adding that CKD was a high risk disease and vaccination could have helped save the life of the patient.
The patient from district Poonch, an elderly 80 year old male had been admitted with severe COVID19 pneumonia, the faculty member said.
Prof S Salim Khan, Head Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at GMC Srinagar said that vaccines had been proven to reduce the risk of both diseases and death among those infected. “It has been proven by multiple studies, across countries,” he said. He also expressed anguish over “thousands and thousands of people ” who had not taken their second dose across the districts of J&K. “They continue to be at risk and we continue to lose lives to COVID19,” he said.
Recently, J&K Government released an analysis of the casualties due to COVID19 in the Kashmir division. As per the data pertaining to approximately three months period, those who had not taken COVID19 vaccine were at least five times more at risk of dying than those who had taken both the doses of vaccine. The data analysis of pre-vaccine period and post vaccine period in Kashmir was also carried out and it was found that vaccines have reduced the rate of hospital admissions by more than half.