The third COVID wave surge in India saw younger population as patients with lesser proportions of all symptoms and higher levels of co-morbidities, Indian Council of Medical Research chief, Dr Balram Bhargava said on 3 January.

The mean age of the younger hospitalised population during this third wave was about 44 years, he said, but added that the incident of comorbidities was higher in this group, at close to half (46 per cent). According to the data collected of hospitalised people in 37 different hospitals across India which did the plasma study during the first and second surge and which are part of the National COVID Clinical Registry, the Omicron surge saw younger in-patients of 44 years as opposed to 55 years earlier, whereas a comparison of co-morbidities stood at 46 per cent versus the 66 per cent earlier.

The study also found the common symptoms, mainly sore throat, lesser use of drugs, and significantly improved outcomes. Dr Bhargava said that 10 per cent of the deaths due to the Omicron variant had happened in vaccinated people who ended up in hospitals, as compared with 22 per cent in those who were not vaccinated against COVID.

About 91 per cent of those vaccinated who died due to infection had co-morbidities, against 83 per cent of those unvaccinated who succumbed to the infectious disease. These results stressed that vaccines may be largely protecting people from severe COVID and deaths, said Dr Bhargava.

The comparative study was conducted in two different time frame from November 15 to December 16, when Delta was the predominant variant and between December 16 to January 17, when the Omicron variant was. These included 564 hospitalised due to Delta and 956 hospitalised due to Omicron.