Tirupati: Panic-driven people rush for Coronavirus tests

Tirupati: The rise in Covid cases has been causing panic among people and for normal fever and cold like symptoms too, they are getting worried.

They are rushing to doctors seeking medical care as they could not differentiate between normal fevers and Covid related ones. This is also one of the reasons for enormous load of samples piling up at laboratories.

To allay such fears among the people and to make them understand the symptoms better, The Hans India approached the Head of General Medicine Department at SVIMS Dr Alladi Mohan who is also engaged with the overall monitoring of treatment at State Covid hospital attached to the Institute.

He made it clear that apart from asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic, there are symptomatic patients in whom the three suspicions reflecting cardinal symptoms are fever, dry cough and breathlessness. "During the Covid season, having any fever or severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) or dry cough accompanied by nil sputum or minimum sputum, one should keep in mind the possibility of Covid. When any of these symptoms are there, patient needs to seek medical care to undergo testing process," he said.

However, RT-PCR which is considered as gold standard can give accurate result only after 48 hours of the onset of disease and in fact, day 4 or day 5 is better to undergo test when mild to moderate symptoms are there. The result will not be accurate in the initial two to three days. If the symptoms are severe, this does not apply and patient has to rush to the hospital.

Dr Mohan added that, during the initial period of illness, till they go for testing, persons having mild to moderate symptoms need to remain at home, under self-isolation and to keep distance of at least 2 metres with others. Aged people are to be more careful as with the increase in age, the risk of severity of disease increases.

"Elderly people associated with other co-morbidities appear to be more vulnerable and are at higher risk for severe, life-threatening disease than the younger generation in whom the disease seems to run a milder course," he maintained.

Regarding the deaths, he said that virulence of the organism, infective dose and the individual's resistance play a crucial role in the mortality. To a question, he said that having mild symptoms of fever or dry cough or breathlessness, one can take symptomatic treatment with paracetamol, cold sponging etc., for 48-72 hours and use of antibiotics blindly is not advisable.

"If symptoms persist after that and having moderate or critical symptoms even for one day, there is a need to rush to the hospital to get checked. It is necessary for their own safety as well as for the safety of the society", he clarified.