Covid-19 Third Wave: Doctor consultations up by 54% in a day, rise 2.5x in just 3 days

New Delhi: Covid-related doctor consultations see a massive jump of 50%. The daily consultations have gone up more than 2.5 times since Jan 1st, according to Practo Insights.

This is the highest single-day increase in doctor consultations in 120 days, since the decline of the deadly second wave. More than 50% of all doctor consultations are for GPs and Pulmonologists with major concerns like fever, sore throat, headache, body pain, stuffy nose, Omicron spread, Covid-19 vaccine booster doses, and vaccines for children, among others.

Around 85% of these queries have come from metro cities, some of which are witnessing a steady rise in the number of positive cases every day. At 132%, Mumbai saw the highest growth in GP-related consultations since Jan 1st,  followed by Kolkata (106%), Delhi NCR (95%), Bangalore (75%), Chennai (47%) and Hyderabad (42%). Queries in non metro cities increased by 53% during the same time period. Over 50% of these consultations came from those in the age group 21-30, followed by 31-40 (40%), 41-50 (10%).

“We have seen a massive surge in the number of covid cases in the last one week indicating the start of a third wave. The festive season is one of the main reasons for the increase as people failed to follow covid protocols and gatherings became a super-spreader events. As seen during the first and second wave, telemedicine will continue to be a life saver, enabling people to reach out to medical professionals virtually. Digital healthcare companies like Practo are taking efforts to ensure that access to medical healthcare during these times is never a challenge for the people”, said Dr. Belliappa, a senior GP practicing on Practo.

These Insights were developed to understand the healthcare patterns of Indians amidst the outbreak of COVID-19 while adhering to our stringent data security and privacy measures. These insights have been created with aggregated and anonymized sets of data from our users who share their age and location with us which is optional. A fundamental tenet of Practo is ensuring that the patients’ health information is safe, secure, and private. Considerable investments have been made to ensure that Practo remains one of the safest places for health information stored by the clinic and hospital partners as well as patients. Visit Practo’s Privacy Policy to learn more about how we keep your data private, safe, and secure.