Less than one per cent of Tuberculosis (TB) patients contracted Covid-19 infection in the third Omicrondominated wave compared to the first and second waves.
According to data provided by the BMC’s TB department, 30 out of 3,281 TB patients tested positive for Covid in the last two months, compared to 232 patients last year and 298 in 2020.
However, none of the TB patients succumbed to the virus in January-February this year. Health experts, however, have attributed this drop in numbers to underreporting of TB cases; they said probably only severe TB patients took the RT-PCR test, resulting in fewer cases. Ganesh Acharya, a TB activist, said there is a need for continuous bidirectional screening for acute respiratory infection and severe acute respiratory infection (ARIs/SARIs) and TB.
He said that although numbers have come down, the actual numbers have not reduced. “It is the number of reports that have reduced. Covid and TB have similar symptoms.
If one is diagnosed with either TB or Covid, the other diagnosis is missed. Hence, the government had started a campaign to test Covid RT-PCR in all TB patients,” he said. As per data, in the first wave, 13,155 TB patients were screened for Covid, out of which 298 (2.26 per cent) were found positive. In the second wave, 20,780 TB patients were tested for Covid and 232 (1.11 per cent) were found infected with the novel coronavirus.
In the third wave, the co-infection came down to 0.91 per cent. Symptoms for TB and Covid-19 are fever, coughing, and breathing problems. The Union Health Ministry therefore, issued guidelines in October 2020 to conduct screening of Covid among TB patients.
Dr Lalit Anande, former medical superintendent of Sewri TB hospital, said there is a possibility that the TB regimen might have contributed to increasing their immunity and saved them from Sars-CoV-2. “TB patients are highly immunocompromised, which makes them most vulnerable to Covid. Yet the co-infection has been extremely limited. So, there is a need for more studies,” said Dr Anande.
Dr Harshad Limaye, senior consultant for internal medicine at Nanavati Max Super Speciality Hospital, said at present there is no clinical evidence to suggest a correlation between TB and Covid. “However, we welcome the constant monitoring and screening that may help us diagnose undetected TB patients who have avoided hospital visits during the pandemic,” he said, adding that like every other medical speciality, detection of fresh TB cases has declined during the pandemic due to re-allocation of resources.
He added, “It is important for individuals with cough lasting more than three weeks, loss of appetite, fever and chills to recognise them as probable symptoms of TB and voluntarily approach the nearest hospital for timely diagnosis and treatment.
