Basic information on covid hopefully you won’t need. What is the disease? How do I measure? What is the cure? What can I do? Aim is to share and increase awareness and help if possible.
Disclaimer: I am NOT a doctor. This info should be verified by you. Its based on my personal experience. I am sharing the basics I learnt the hard way. Info may be wrong.
1/ Covid is a lungs’ disease. The virus damages one’s lungs. The extent of this damage may be dependent on age, gender, pre-existing conditions (specially diabetes cuz your sugar go high in covid). Novelty of the disease asks me to highlight the keyword “may”
2/ If your lungs get damaged to a huge extent (think 50%+), there are no quick solutions. It’s not math that it will take x days to repair y% damage. Body doesn’t function like that. Lungs auto-heal. Naturally. Over time. Days, weeks, months, years. Sometimes, they don’t as well.
3/ Timing in Covid is extremely important. D0, D1, D2..D14..D20.. of you catching the virus. After 14-20 days, the virus leaves your body but it already does the damage it had to do in those 15-20 days
4/ In 15-20 days, your lungs are damaged at very high rate, hence timing is extremely important. It may happen that on D5 you have mild damage and on D20 you have damage so severe that it may be fatal. So, every single day the lung is getting damaged at high rate
5/ Once you get covid, covid negative or positive isn’t imp except for not spreading it and containing the virus. Covid is like a ball hitting a glass (your lungs). The ball will hit and leave. The glass is broken and needs repair. Quoting a doc. So, duck to miss the ball (mask)
6/ How do I know what is the extent of damage? CT Scan shows you severity score which tells the lung involvement / damage. You start seeing symptoms like decline in oxygen levels, difficulty in breathing, chest pain if your lungs get more and more damaged.
7/ If there are symptoms - condition of lungs can be measured with CT Scan, Lung X-Ray, blood tests, ABG reports (informs about your blood oxygen, CO2 levels), D-Dimer (blood clotting), IL6 (inflammation), PCT (bacterial sepsis/bacterial infection in blood)
8/ Instant metrics - Respiratory rate (RR) - number of breaths you take per minute increases from normal indicating load on your lungs increased, spO2 - blood oxygen level decreases (can be measured with a oxymeter)
9/ What is the cure? With covid, there is no cure as such. Lungs auto-heal. All one has to do is keep blood oxygen level sustainable to support all bodily functions until lungs heal and oxygen is not a problem. Enter oxygen support / ventilators / therapy
10/ In case of mild to high damage to lungs and the lungs not being able to pump up enough oxygen, you need to start getting direct oxygen through a low-flow/high-flow mask attached to some oxygen supply.
11/ If situation becomes worse and high-flow oxygen is not able to support enough to get your oxygen to sustainable levels, you require ventilation. Non-invasive or invasive (which is kind of the last resort). But, small % of people reach this unfortunate state.
12/ Meanwhile, there are couple of things which are being done-Plasma Therapy (injecting antibodies from someone cured). This only makes sense in initial ~10 days of one getting the disease, cuz this only stops the virus and kills it. So, if done earlier, the damage may reduce.
13/ This has not been proven to have any great results. Remember, covid is pretty novel. We still don’t exactly know what works. Randomized controlled trials are WIP. That is why WHO keeps disowning cures. They can’t back something without statistical proof.
14/ There is a nation-wide protocol (world-wide?) which is followed for covid cases as there is no exact cure. I’m attaching the protocol I have from Nov’20 (may have changed) - https://tinyurl.com/sj72gpyk. By protocol, I mean -you’ve x symptom/y test result -> you get z treatment
15/ What can I do? Step 1 - Don’t go out unless necessary / you’ve antibodies / vaccination done. If necessary, wear N95+surgical mask. Not the simple clothes mask but N95, if possible. Take the virus seriously.
16/ Step 1 cont If you’re living with family with people 40+, then please don’t go out. People above 50 & infact males (read a legit study) are most vulnerable. Obviously, females and 40- are too at high risk, but please think about the most vulnerable if that helps in not going
17/ Step 2 in case you get the disease, or even slightest cough or fever or fatigue, isolate yourself. It spreads faster than fire. Contain if you can, however much you can.
18/ Step 2 cont Don’t shy away from getting a test done - knowing you have covid will make your job easier with meds, diet, mindset etc. Remember, initial 15 days are important and stuff is to be done - don’t be in denial.
19/ Step 3 In case of covid- get an oxymeter, thermometer and see a doctor to get the medicines. Take these medicines diligently. Keep checking your oxymeter. Consult doctor everyday. Get admitted to a hospital in case symptoms grow. Better to be around all necessary things.
20/ Step 4 Keep your diet in check. Drink loads of hot fluids. I think this part is easily available on the internet. Take steam. Eat citrus fruits.
21/ Step 5 SLEEP IN PRONE POSITION. TURNED POSITION. SLEEP ON YOUR CHEST. If not, sleep sideways. I cannot emphasise this enough. I do not know many people who know the value of this. Patients on ventilator are also made to be slept turned in prone position. That’s the only cure.
22/ Don’t believe me on the importance of the above? Search up “prone positioning”. It’s one of the effective ways (though certain risks). Lungs actually lie towards the back of our body more than front - so, it helps lung heal. Afaik.
23/ Step 6 Again an extremely important step : Breathing exercises. There are YouTube videos around this. Tutorials. Do these exercises. Long breaths. If you need a device, they are cheaply available on Amazon.
24/ The last suggestion around what one can do would be don’t forget the body post covid. Have seen many post covid (2 months after covid is over) complications. UTI. Dengue. Random diseases. Try to take care post covid as well. Easy to say, hard to do.
Fin.
Originally published by Shilpi Agrawal on Twitter.