452 tuberculosis patients contracted Covid-19 in Mumbai

Although Mumbai is being considered as the tuberculosis (TB) capital of India, patients in the city have largely escaped being co-infected with Covid-19. The Covid-19 positivity rate among the tested TB patients is around 1.8%.

Although Mumbai is being considered as the tuberculosis (TB) capital of India, patients in the city have largely escaped being co-infected with Covid-19. Since the outbreak of the pandemic in March last year, only 452 TB patients undergoing treatment in the city have contracted the coronavirus. The Covid-19 positivity rate among the tested TB patients is around 1.8%.

Covid-19 and tuberculosis are infectious diseases which primarily attack the lungs of the patients. (HT FILE)

TB and Covid-19 are infectious diseases which primarily attack the lungs. They present similar symptoms such as cough, fever and difficulty breathing, although TB disease has a longer incubation period and a slower onset. So, to overrule any possibilities of misdiagnosis, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has conducted 25,303 tests for Covid-19 among TB patients with symptoms between March 2020 and August this year. Of this, 452 patients have been identified with TB-Covid co-infection.

Doctors said Covid-19 can be lethal for TB patients whose lung capacity is already compromised. In addition, TB patients also tend to have co-morbid or living conditions like malnutrition, diabetes, smoking, HIV among others that increase their vulnerability. Data from BMC shows that 37 TB patients have succumbed to the co-infection since the start of the pandemic.

“Patients with TB have two-fold risk of severe Covid-19. So, after the pandemic started, we shifted the TB patients to Covid Care Centres, especially from slums like Dharavi, Bandra (East), Kurla, Govandi among others that record a large number of TB cases every year,” said Dr Pranita Tipre, in-charge of TB department in BMC.

In October 2020, the Central health department issued guidelines on Bi-directional TB-Covid-19 screening and screening of TB among influenza-like-illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) cases. Following which, all government and private hospitals were instructed to test symptomatic patients with ILI, SARI and Covid-19 with TB.

Doctors have called for more research to understand the reason for low co-infection rates among TB patients.

“TB patients are highly immunocompromised which makes them most vulnerable to contracting Covid-19. Despite this, the number of co-infection has been extremely limited. So, there is a possibility that the TB regimen may have somehow saved them from Sars-CoV-2. But we need more studies to establish the fact,” said Dr Lalit Anande, former medical superintendent of Sewri TB Hospital.