Covid-19 knocks down young Indians 6
Karan, 38, fell ill while campaigning for elections in his village.
India – a country of 1.3 billion people – suffered the second wave of Covid-19.
At the beginning of the year, India seemed to have defeated the pandemic and started vaccination.
New Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said 65% of new patients are under 45 years old.
Khusrav Bajan, consultant at PD Hinduja National Hospital in Mumbai, said: `We saw more children under 12 and 15 years of age being admitted to hospital during the second wave. Last year there were not even any.
In Gujarat state, pathologist Amit Dave said heart, lung and kidney symptoms in young people are also increasing.
Indian people during the Holi festival of colors in Mathura, March 2021.
In the south Bangalore region, 40-year-olds accounted for 58% of infections in early April, up from 46% last year.
`Over the past year, the number of infections (in young people) has never increased as quickly as in the past week. People wrote on social networks, texted each other frantically because they all tested positive,` Tanu
Doctors also noticed a higher proportion of younger patients in the latest outbreak.
Virus expert Shahid Jameel, director of the Trivedi School of Biological Sciences at Ashoka University, explains: `Gene sequencing will tell you about the variant that is circulating, but it does not replace the measures that need to be taken.`
Last weekend, authorities blocked the city of Mumbai, imposing a nighttime curfew to prevent the spread of the virus.
`Young people need to be vaccinated more. I see patients in their 30s being hospitalized every day,` said Muzammil Ahmed, a 25-year-old pharmacist.
Many hospitals in India have become overloaded.
`When I talk to colleagues in major cities across India, they get a lot of calls from patients trying to find beds. I’m quite scared thinking about the next month,` he said.
