Clinico-epidemiological profile of COVID-19 patients admitted during third wave of pandemic in a tertiary care hospital in New Delhi, India.

Even nearly two years after the first reported case, the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) continues to ebb and flow around the world. A retrospective cohort study was carried out to determine the clinico-epidemiological profile and outcome of the cases. The study analyzed secondary data from 827 patients who presented to our center with COVID-19-related illnesses between December 15, 2021, and February 15, 2022 (third wave in India). There was a significant difference in the vaccination status of patients treated at home and those admitted, with 87.9% having received two doses compared to 74% in the second group being unvaccinated. Patients who were isolated at home recovered at a rate of 99.4%, while hospitalized patients died at a rate of 26.5%. Vaccination reduces the severity of COVID-19; however, constant vigilance for new variants, precautionary measures, and increased vaccination drives are critical moving forward.   *Other members of the Safdarjung Hospital COVID-19 working group: B. Lal (Medicine), Harish Sachdeva (Anaesthesiology), Santvana Kohli (Anaesthesiology), Amandeep Jaswal (Anaesthesiology), Sumitra Bachani (Obstetrics and Gynecology), Ajay Kumar (Pediatrics), Rohit Kumar (Pulmonary Medicine), Vidya Sagar Chaturvedi (Surgery), Vinod Chaitanya (Medicine).

Nurturing the Next Generation: Health Challenges in Infants and Children Across Asia and Africa.

Over the past 20 years, there has been a global improvement in the health of the world's population. For instance, the number of illnesses among children under five years old has been reduced by half in the last 40 years. Unfortunately, in the past decade, these positive trends have reversed in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa and some areas of South Asia. Asia and Africa carry the highest disease burden worldwide. The lack of adequately trained healthcare professionals in the public sector, as well as inequalities based on social, financial, and geographical factors, contribute to high mortality rates in Asian and African countries. Infants and children in lower-middle-income countries are particularly vulnerable to these healthcare system inequities. While the global under-five mortality rate has decreased by half in the last two decades, this progress is not observed in African and Asian countries, where the situation may even be worse in some cases. Mortality indicators, although crucial for assessing health status and making global comparisons, fail to fully capture the disease burden and healthcare utilization. Morbidity indicators, which provide insights into the prevalence of diseases, are underutilized due to limited data availability, ineffective reporting, and gaps in data storage and analysis. This article explores the morbidity data from two Asian and two African countries in an attempt to understand the most common health challenges faced by infants and children in these regions.