No need to panic about Covid-19. Getting the facts right and understanding the infection and its symptoms is key to recovery. Even in patients with comorbidities, it is possible to recover by taking preventive measures.
No need to panic, stays in the body for only nine days:
COVID-19 stays in the body for only nine days. By the time, one gets diagnosed with COVID; it’s the seventh day and, one needs to struggle for some days to remove it from the body. The recovery rate of people with the infection in India is high and even the direct fatality rate is low. The key is to remember that even in patients with co-morbidities, precaution and prevention must be the norm.
There are two phases of COVID-19 and it manifests in the temporary form (for the first 9 days) and persistent form (which takes about 3-4 weeks).
1. The first form is called the viral phase in which the infection can lead to loss of sense of smell and taste, pain in the ear, diarrhea, pneumonia, cough, fever, etc. After 9 days, the virus enters the non-replicative state and the damage can take about 3-4 months to recover.
2. In the second phase, it can cause diarrhea, gastritis, esophagitis, pharyngitis, and pneumonia or even recurrent loss of smell and taste which usually disappears in four weeks.
Maintain respiratory and hand hygiene:
Some tips from HCFI
1. It is important to remember that if there is no fever or flu then it is not corona. If there is no breathlessness, then there is no oxygen requirement.
2. It is better to do a corona namaste or elbow touch rather than shaking hands.
3. Maintain social distance 1 meter from a person with cough and cold; wash hands (Remember the mnemonic SUMAN K – seedha ulta mutthi anghuta nakhun kalai) with soap and water or 70% alcohol sanitizer, disinfect surfaces, use surgical masks, if infected (symptoms
4. If you have fever with dry cough with or without breathlessness self- isolate (quarantine yourself at home), wear surgical mask, do frequent hand wash and call your doctor.
Padma Shri Awardee, Dr K K Aggarwal
President, HCFI and CMAAO, New Delhi