The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in its new study has found that over half of those Covid-19 patients who had developed a secondary infection, had died. The ICMR conducted study across 10 hospitals in the country.

The retrospective study of secondary infections among patients admitted in ICUs and wards of 10 hospitals was conducted by the ICMR between June and August 2020. The study has shown that many Covid-19 patients develop a secondary bacterial or fungal infection during treatment or after and these have led to death in over half of the cases.

Out of the 17,534 patients, 3.6 percent developed a secondary bacterial or fungal infection and the mortality among these patients was 56.7 percent. The mortality rate was manifold in case of secondary infections as against the overall mortality of Covid-19 patients admitted at hospitals.

The demographic data, time of infection after admission, microbiological and antimicrobial resistance data of secondary infections, and clinical outcome data of the admitted Covid-19 patients were studied. the study has further pointed at drug-resistant pathogens playing a significant role behind these secondary infections.

The study suggests many patients needed potent antibiotics that are on the watchlist of WHO and are meant to be used judiciously as they had superbugs and couldn’t be treated with regular antibiotics.

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