Deficiencies in monitoring mechanisms - Those at home quarantine in Chennai must be monitored well for the COVID infection
Posted on: 27/May/2021 9:19:54 AM
Recently, in Chennai, persons undergoing home quarantine for Coronavirus infection have lost their lives and this has grabbed the attention of many now.
It must be noted that a 28 year old journalist and a 46 year old person belonging to Chennai died when they were in home based quarantines. Many such cases are on the rise now in Chennai where the patients after getting discharged from Covid care centres for home based quarantine develop complications and lose their precious lives. The deficiencies in the monitoring mechanisms have been brought out now.
To check the progression of the virus, timeline of treatment and medical intervention are important. This has been pointed out by the doctors now.
The patients usually take a CT scan or X-Ray on the first or second day of the infection. This was as per Dr. Ashwin Karuppan, emergency care and infectious diseases consultant at Gleneagles Global Health. He added that at this point the cytokine storm (immune system going to hyperactive drive that complicates matter) is missed. Truth is that even after 4 to 5 days on Covid-19 infection, monitoring the symptoms like saturation levels, tiredness, persistent fever and cough etc is important. Testing and consultation would be essential if the symptoms still persist. For detecting inflammation, blood tests are important and to know about the lung involvement CT scans are important.
Dr. Ashwin Karuppan later spoke about how blood tests like CBC, D-Dimer, CRP, Ferritin etc are important and they are done to check the progression of the infection and understanding about the inflammation in the body. Point is that the markers on the body would reveal about the severity of the inflammation and about the particular stage of the infection. At this stage, the doctors could decide on when to give steroids to the patients.
It is essential to evaluate inflammatory markers and blood sugar levels after 5 days of infection. Based on the inflammatory markers only, a decision on whether CT scan would be required or steroids could be given could be taken by the doctors. This was according to Dr. Kolandaisamy, former director of public health. He added that if the markers indicated an increase the medical intervention must be sought out at once for steroids and for upgraded treatment at the hospital.
On the 10th day of the infection, to check the progression of the infection, blood investigation plays an important role in evaluation. Information is that the oxygen saturation levels cannot be the only indicator and CT scan could be carried out to indicate the level of infection.
Virus progression or replication could be halted by using Ivermectin,Azithromycin and steroids. This was mentioned by Dr. Narendra Nath Jena, senior consultant, emergency medicines, Meenakshi Mission Hospital, Madurai.
