Omicron may not overload hospitals in Telangana

Hyderabad: The daily peak hospitalisations and ICU facilities requirement during the Omicron variant driven Covid-19 third wave are expected to be within manageable limits in Telangana, latest projections made by researchers from Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc)-Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Bengaluru have indicated. Unlike the Delta variant when the hospitalisation was hovering between 20 per […]

Hyderabad: The daily peak hospitalisations and ICU facilities requirement during the Omicron variant driven Covid-19 third wave are expected to be within manageable limits in Telangana, latest projections made by researchers from Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc)-Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Bengaluru have indicated.

Unlike the Delta variant when the hospitalisation was hovering between 20 per cent and 25 per cent among active infections, the Omicron variant is expected not to put extreme pressure on hospitalisations and ICU facilities in Telangana. The IISc-ISI predictions based on the transmissibility of Omicron variant, developed by researchers, Siva Athreya and Rajesh Sundaresan, has indicated that even during worst case scenario, the hospitalisations in Telangana will peak at around 10,500 beds in a day.

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The overall bed strength in Telangana in government and private hospitals, which includes regular, ICU and oxygen beds, is 56,036 beds out of which 40,697 are in private hospitals while the rest of the 15,339 beds are in government hospitals.

The availability of over 50,000 hospital beds in Telangana is an indication that if the IISc-ISI projections hold good, then the hospital and ICU beds requirement will be under control, although the daily Covid infections are likely to continue to rise. The IISc-ISI projection models have indicated the daily requirement for ICU beds could peak at just under 1,000 hospitals beds. “Past infection, vaccination, affected by immunity waning makes a certain fraction of the population susceptible to the new variant, is taken as a parameter of 30 per cent, 60 per cent and 100 per cent,” the researchers said.

When 100 per cent of the population (worst case scenario) in Telangana are susceptible, then peak hospitalisation will be around 10,500 per day, when 60 per cent are susceptible, then the hospital bed requirement will peak just above 6000 and if only 30 per cent of the population is susceptible, then the daily hospital bed requirement will peak at 4000. The peak ICU bed requirement in hospitals during the Covid third wave will hover between 600 and below 1000 ICU beds.

Public health officials here who frequently track the IISc-ISI projections said the model is quite significant because it is an ensemble model for all Covid-19 projections in India, which means it’s a collection of different existing Covid models in the country. This means the model removes excessive dependence on one single model to understand the trajectory of the Covid third wave.

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