NEW DELHI: Conjunctivitis or pink eye is emerging as a new Covid-19 symptom among both children and adults, doctors said.
As Covid-19 cases started spiking in India from March onwards, paediatricians in many cities reported that children -- including infants -- were getting infected with conjunctivitis, the predominant symptom of the Covid-19 infection.
But now, doctors in Kerala said they found that adults detected with Covid-19 are also being infected with conjunctivitis, which refers to the swelling of the conjunctiva -- the thin layer that lines the white part of the eye and the inside of the eyelid.
According to Dr Anoop Kumar, Senior Consultant, Critical Care Medicine, Calicut, about 30% of the patients he had seen had conjunctivitis as a symptom of Covid-19.
“This is a relatively uncommon symptom of Covid-19 and has not been seen before. Also, around 60% of the people infected with Covid-19 had throat pain,” he told The New Indian Express.
He said that apart from conjunctivitis, patients also reported chill accompanied by fever.
“All cases were mild to moderate, and the severity was not high. None of them developed pneumonia,” he added.
He said next-generation sequencing was done from Strand LS lab, which is an INSACOG-approved lab for sequencing, on 25 random samples.
It was found that while 56 per cent of samples were XBB 1.16, which is leading the current Covid-19 surge, 13 percent were XBB 1.22. “XBB.1.22 was seen in Bangalore. This is the first time this relatively new variant has been reported in Kerala,” he said.
Though this is the first time conjunctivitis as a Covid-19 symptom has been found in Kerala, paediatricians in many cities said they found this eye-related symptoms among children, some even as young as one month.
According to Dr Dhiren Gupta, Deputy Director Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Allergy and Pulmonology, at Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram hospital, 20 per cent of the children who tested for Covid-19 had conjunctivitis as the main symptom.
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“I saw infants as young as one month with conjunctivitis. In none of the Covid-19 waves, we saw this eye ailment symptom among children suffering from the virus,” he told The New Indian Express.
The eye ailment -- in which itching, irritation, or burning, discharge and crusting of eyelids or lashes, especially in the morning, is seen -- lasts for three to five days, he added.
He said children may be getting conjunctivitis as the virus is rapidly evolving. “The infants also have less immunity and are exposed more.”
Dr. Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the National Indian Medical Association (IMA) Covid-19 task force said, “In summer, it is common to get viral conjunctivitis, which spreads through contact, especially between people who do not wash their hands often. When they touch their eye, secretions containing virus sticks on their fingers, and this is easily transferred to the next person.
“This Covid-19 wave occurred in summer. It is quite possible that the common viral conjunctivitis we see every summer was also seen in some patients who tested positive for Covid-19. At this time it is unclear whether it is an overlap of two viral infections or the conjunctivitis being a new manifestation of COVID. This needs monitoring because as the virus is acquiring more mutations, we need to know if it is gaining the ability to affect other organs of the body,” he told The New Indian Express.
Recently, Dr Vipin M Vasishtha and Dr Puneet Kumar, both paediatricians, also highlighted the rising risk of conjunctivitis among infants tested with Covid-19. In the study, which was published in medXriv, a pre-print server for health sciences, they shared that young infants were disproportionately more affected than older children.
