The Covid-19 strain behind India’s disastrous second wave of Coronavirus is the most contagious that has surfaced so far and doctors want to understand if it’s also the most severe. Hearing impairment, severe gastric issues and blood clots leading to gangrene. These symptoms are not typically seen in Covid patients and have been associated by doctors in India with the Delta variant.
In countries like England and Scotland, early data indicate that newly dominant strains bear a higher risk of hospitalization.
In just six months the B.1.617.2 virus has spread to over 60 countries and resulted in travel curbs from Australia to the U.S.
The infection surge caused by the Delta strain has put pressure on the UK government to rethink its reopening plans later this month. Greater rates of transmission compared with other variants, and a decline in vaccine effectiveness have made learning the strain’s effects especially critical.
“We need more scientific research to analyze if these newer clinical presentations are linked to B.1.617 or not,” said Abdul Ghafur, an infectious disease physician at the Apollo Hospital in Chennai.
Ghafur said he is seeing more Covid-19 patients with diarrhoea now than in the first wave of the epidemic.
Our New Enemy.
“Last year, we thought we had learned about our new enemy, but it changed,” said Ghafur. He added that the virus has become very unpredictable.
Some common ailments that Covid recovered patients experience Stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, hearing loss and joint pain.
Beta and Gamma variants found in South Africa and Brazil respectively have presented little or no indications of producing many clinical signs, according to a study by researchers from the University of New South Wales last month.
A Mumbai based cardiologist, Ganesh Manudhane, said that microthrombi or small blood clots develop in some patients to severe levels leading to affected tissues dying and developing gangrene. Manudhane has by far treated eight patients with complaints of thrombotic complications, out of which two had to go for amputations of fingers or afoot.
“I saw three-to-four cases the whole of last year, and now it’s one patient a week,” Manudhane said.
Baffled by the Clots
The Delta variant behind the deadly second wave has infected around 18.6 million people in India, which is reported to be 50% more infectious than the Alpha strain that was first detected in the U.K., according to a recent study by an Indian government panel.
The surge may have increased the incidences with which rare Covid complications are observed. Manudhane said the blood clots cases he’s seeing in patients in all age groups with no history of coagulation-related problems has baffled him. “We suspect it could be because of the new virus variant,” he said.
Manudhane is gathering data to study why some people are developing clots and others don’t.
Doctors are also studying occurrences of clots growing in blood vessels that go to the intestines causing stomach pain - their only symptom, local media have reported.
Also Read: Explained: Covid19 antibody cocktail, How it works and who should take it
Some Covid patients are also taking medical treatment for hearing loss, swelling around the neck and severe tonsillitis, said a Mumbai based Hetal Marfatia, an ear nose and throat surgeon.
“Every person is showing different symptoms” in the second wave, she added.
Aware of the atypical presentations of Covid variants
The unusual occurrences Delta presents and a closely linked variant known as Kappa, whose spread has caused a fourth lockdown in Melbourne are still being established, said Raina MacIntyre, a professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Meanwhile, it is important that we are more alert and aware of the atypical presentations of these variants, she added.
India’s current epidemic is rapidly spreading at an alarming rate which is causing infection in children, said Chetan Mundada, a paediatrician working with the Yashoda group of hospitals in Hyderabad.
Apollo’s Ghafur said unlike last year’s, he has seen entire families getting infected with Coronavirus during the second wave, which reflects a rise in household transmission caused by the Delta variant.
Mucormycosis cases, a rare opportunistic fungal infection and fatal infection has also been rising in the country, which has infected over 8,800 covid patients and survivors as of May 22. Seeing an increasing number of Black Fungus the local health care authorities have declared it an epidemic.
Also Read: Are PPE Kits and other biological Waste, prone to Earth’s disaster?
Although India’s second wave is declining, Delta has sparked an outbreak and retreated in various places including Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam, calling for mass immunization.
“New vaccines have to be prepared with new variants in mind. We can’t get ahead of the virus, but at least we can at least keep up with it,” said Ghafur.