Unvaccinated patients with comorbidities dominate hospitalised COVID cases

The Health Ministry has picked up a trend with hospitalised COVID patients, whereby a majority of cases monitored in the facilities are people with multiple underlying illnesses or unvaccinated from the virus.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony shared during Friday’s briefing that Guyana has 12,773 active cases, of which 130 are hospitalised. While a majority of persons would recover, this trend is evident.
“What we’re finding is that the persons who are becoming hospitalised now, they would have a lot of comorbidities, not just one underlying illness but several underlying illnesses. We have noticed that pattern. Secondly, most of the people that are coming in the hospitals have not been vaccinated,” he added.
Of recent, there is a high percentage of unvaccinated elderly persons in the facilities, compounded with their comorbid conditions.
“These are all risk factors and because of that, we have found that a lot of these patients don’t do too well and they’re at risk of dying if they get COVID. These are the challenges that we have and if there are persons who have not been vaccinated, I would encourage them to go and get vaccinated.”
When the disease persists for a couple of weeks, it is considered ‘long COVID’. If hospitalisation is beyond four weeks, the Ministry also deem it a long COVID case. With Omicron, the hospitalisation interval is reduced but the Minister outlined that the long-term condition of these patients is yet to be determined.
“It’s too early to know because Omicron was only discovered in November last year and persons with long COVID, there are two phases: people between four weeks to three months; and then three months to six months. We still have to observe to determine if people are coming back with symptoms of long COVID, especially after being infected with the Omicron variant but we know that long COVID exists.”
Dr Anthony identified that depending on the variant in question, significant changes are notable in infected patients. In previous cases, some people were affected with lung complications, decreasing the organ’s capacity.
Others experienced heart issues, ranging from palpitation which led to bleeding problems. There were instances where patients later developed severe chest pains that mimicked myocardial infractions or heart attack. Some reported neuropsychiatric symptoms whereby fatigue, muscle aches and headaches were observed.
“We also saw that persons had changes in their blood and in some cases, if you’ve had COVID in the past, you can end up with changes in clotting of the blood, resulting in changes what is called emboli. That can lead to other types of complications,” he added.
Anxiety, depression and sleep disruptions have also been observed after recovery. After infection, kidney injuries are among the assortment of complications that may arise, or effects on the endocrine system.
“Persons who never had diabetes, post-COVID some of them can exhibit the symptoms of diabetes. Others who have had diabetes, they can have some challenges controlling their blood sugar. We have also seen patients with thyroiditis, that is a disease of the thyroid gland,” the Minister shared in his update.
Among the slew of post-infection effects is demineralisation of the bones. In terms of the skin and hair, cases of hair loss have been reported as a post-COVID syndrome. In children, multi-inflammatory system disease can occur. With Omicron, the post-infection presentation is different.
“With Omicron, because the presentation is different, we have seen that more people who are infected would have more of an upper respiratory tract type of infection, meaning the nose, mouth and throat…It’s a little bit too early to understand what the impact of Omicron might be in terms of long-COVID.”
Physicians have been working in the long COVID unit to examine patients who fall within this category, providing the necessary treatment. (G12)