How well Kerala protects its senior citizens from getting infected will be critical to the State’s overall strategy to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, reveal projections by the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA).
Public health experts, given the COVID-19 infection patterns and mortality rates worldwide, have already voiced the need to prevent infections among the aged as they are more at risk.
KSDMA projections on post-lockdown scenarios in Kerala presented before Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday categorically emphasise this point. The authority has suggested measures such as reverse isolation once the lockdown is lifted for protecting people above 60 years of age from getting infected.
As per the projections, the overall COVID-19-related hospitalisation requirement will diminish by 33% if two-thirds of the people aged above 60 are protected from infection. In this scenario, critical care requirements will come down by 55%.
If half the senior citizens are adequately protected, overall hospitalisation and critical care needs will get reduced by 25% and 41% respectively. In a third scenario where one-third of the 60-plus population is protected from infection, the overall hospitalisation and requirement for critical care will diminish by 16% and 28% respectively.
The projections have been made by an eight-member team at the KSDMA using local data and a refined Kerala-centric model of the SEIR (susceptible population- exposed- infected-recovered) used for influenza forecasts.
Analysing the first 51 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in the State, the KSDMA team points out that nine of the patients were aged above 60 years. A sizeable section of the patients are aged above 60.
