With 77.88 pc recovery rate, post-COVID care gains equal importance

By Joymala Bagchi
New Delhi [India], September 13 : As India crossed a cumulative of 47 lakh COVID-19 cases and daily recoveries exceeding 70,000, post-COVID care is gaining more importance with hospitals setting up post-COVID care telephonic or physical consultation.
The Union health ministry in a press release stated that India continues to report high numbers of recoveries with 78,399 registered recoveries in last 24 hours. The total number of recoveries has touched 3,702,595 taking the Recovery Rate to 77.88 per cent.
Health experts have observed that post-COVID-19 infection, a full recovery can be quite a challenge. Those patients who have recovered from this disease complain of generalised fatigue and are not able to return to an absolutely normal level of well-being even after a long time since they had the infection. The same phenomenon was seen in the SARS virus which affected Hong Kong and other countries.
"Post-COVID care is coming up across India. Recovered patients with their negative RTPCR test result are suffering from severe to mild weakness, skin rashes, headache, diarrhoea, mild pain in the abdomen which persist for long. Some patients also notice low-grade fever," said Dr Anup Kumar, Professor and Head of Urology and Renal Transplant Department, Safdarjung hospital.
In addition, Dr Kumar stated, "It has been decided that these patients after recovery should daily visit the post-COVID-care clinic and physicians will look after their complaints there. If symptoms are bothersome, an RT-PCR might be conducted again to see if the patient has actually recovered or not. Proper counselling is also crucial."
Patients who are in the high-risk category such as diabetes, lung disease, hypertension, along with old and pregnant women and have symptoms are requested to come to post-COVID care for relief.
Dr Ajay Kaul, Chairman & HOD-CTVS, BLK Super Speciality Hospital said, "Nothing is known about long term problems but close observation and watch on patients must be observed on recovered patients or those patients who had only mild symptoms. We need to be very careful and repeat medical examination. Investigation will be necessary to diagnose these patients in an early stage so that they don't go into a chronic stage of heart failure or pulmonary fibrosis. The damages to the Organs like kidney, lungs and brain need to be evaluated carefully."
Dr Kaul alerted saying, "There are three issues which are very serious, one of them being intravascular clotting second is pulmonary issues and third is cardiomyopathy. We have to be very vigilant and diagnose these patients very early so that we can prevent permanent damage."
Unfortunately, there are no clear answers to these questions and very little is known about the long term effect of this virus on human beings, the only way forward is to remain vigilant.
While informing about post-COVID symptoms Dr Rajiv Parakh, Chairman Vascular Surgery, Medanta, Gurugram told, "The patient could suffer from fatigue, shortness of breath and other physically debilitating effects of the disease, and also grapple with the mental anguish and anxiety caused by the uncertainties of this disease."
"Dizzy spells or vertigo, headaches, diminished ability to concentrate, memory recall and recognition of daily routine with the inability to think clearly are possible mediums to long term after-effects of the disease. It can impact patient's daily routine, personal and professional life which is a great cause for concern," said Dr Parakh.
According to Dr Parakh the patients should not take stress about a positive test if they are asymptomatic for 10 days or more, as dead virus continues to shed for weeks even after the patient recovers. Patients should go to physicians if at any point when the mental or physical difficulties are overwhelming or severe.
Generally, it has been observed that heart, lung, kidney and brain are affected maximum by this virus any early signs and symptoms should be reported to the doctor immediately like early fatigue, breathlessness, pain in the calf muscles, cramps may be early signs.