Coronavirus Study Shared by Dr. Praveen Gupta, Pediatrician & General Physician

In current pandemic consider every patient who is presenting with flu like symptoms of even one day to be COVID positive and ask them to isolate and get RT-PCR done. The COVID infection was more common in males. Male to female ratio was 70:30. In around 15-20% of patient’s pneumonia sets in as early as 4^th day from 1st day of symptom (in 2020 COVID wave pneumonia occurred mostly after 6-8 days of illness). The most vulnerable age group was 30-50 years of age.

As seen common complaints of male group on 5^th day onwards of diseases presenting to my clinic was fever, cough and weakness with or without difficulty in breathing and CT Score was around 10-15/25 in most of patients on Day 6-8. While females presented with more of low-grade fever, body ache, fatigue, loss of taste and nausea (high grade fever was not common in females after 3 days of illness). Loss of taste started on Day 5 of illness and lasted for around 12-15 days [in 2020 loss of smell was more common].

Males suffered more of pneumonia and hypoxemia as compared to female group. RT-PCR was unreliable in around 20% patients as it was negative on 3rd or 4^th day but patients were symptomatic and confirmed by inflammatory markers and CT CHEST on day 5 or day 6.

The use of optimum dose of steroids in early phase of pneumonia was very beneficial and lifesaving. Around 10 percent patient presented with severe pain in epigastrium along with fever on 3rd day of illness (more in females). The patients above 60 were not very sick and did well during treatment and very few of them hospitalized (last year mortality was very high in old age group). If fever persist beyond 5 days than by using steroids u can save lot of patients from hypoxia.

In spite of lock down from 18^th April 2021 COVID cases took the country as a storm, this was because patients were not accepting that they were suffering from COVID, most of them made excuses that they had consumed cold drinks or juices that’s why they had sore throat or fever. But by this time, they had already spread the virus in their family. So like this a chain reaction was taking place and we were getting more and more cases day by day.