Ghaziabad: One-year-old is first patient at paediatric ICU set up for third wave

A one-year-old boybecame the first Covid-19 patient to be admitted to the paediatric ICU (PICU) of the government-acquired Santosh Medical College on Sunday, a tertiary care facility set up to deal with a possible third wave

A one-year-old boybecame the first Covid-19 patient to be admitted to the paediatric ICU (PICU) of the government-acquired Santosh Medical College on Sunday, a tertiary care facility set up to deal with a possible third wave.

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The Ghaziabad health department said the child suffered diarrhoea and later tested positive for Covid-19.

“The condition of the patient is stable, and doctors are keeping a close watch. Nowadays, we do not have a lot many cases. Two days ago, two patients were found to have low oxygen saturation levels and were immediately shifted to a facility,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer. “We have also started mapping areas from where fresh cases are coming in.”

According to official records of the district health department, the district has 70 PICU beds at Santosh Medical College and Sanjay Nagar Combined District Hospital while there are 110 isolation beds for children at the two hospitals besides the four community health centres at Muradnagar, Loni, Modinagar and Dasna.

As per state control room record of July 12, the Ghaziabad district has 55583 total cases which include 55087 patients discharged, 461 deaths and 35 active cases.

“Although there is no major increase in number of cases, we are keeping a constant tab on health status of every individual patient and are closely monitoring high case load areas. We are sending 5% of positive samples regularly for genome sequencing and till date, of about 192 samples, none have returned any positive result for a severe variant of the coronavirus,” said Dr Gupta.

According to official records, the district detected 49 patients (11.61%) in age group 0-20 years out of total 422 positive cases detected during the period June 1 to July 10 this year. Of the 49 patients, seven cases are aged 0-10 years while the rest are in age group 11-20 years.

During the period of first wave from March 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, the health department data indicated that the percentage of patients in age group 0-20 was 9.82%; 2718 out of total 27671 cases.

It was about 9.89% (2755 cases out of total 27849 cases) during the second wave period identified from April 1, 2021, to June 18, 2021, by the health department.

The experts said that there is no major surge witnessed at present in patients having Covid-like symptoms.

“The severity in cases is also not majorly adverse. But having said this, people should not shun the use of mask at any cost. It must continue. The health department should accelerate vaccination process with wider coverage,” said Dr Ashish Agarwal, president of Indian Medical Association (Ghaziabad).