Useful Gyan

Coronavirus has impacted our lives in the last 2 years. As we slowly reel back to normal, we have been reading news about unvaccinated people getting transmitted with coronavirus in North Korea. This creates a higher risk of new variants as mentioned by World Health Organization.

Lack of vaccines and medical infrastructure in the country has led to the detection of new cases.

It is a family of viruses leading to illnesses like:

• Common Cold
• Middle East respiratory syndrome – MERS
• Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – SARS

A new coronavirus was detected in 2019 and was identified as the cause of outbreak originating in China. During the pandemic we have heard of SARS-CoV-2, which is the name of the virus called acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The virus causes a disease called coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19.

In March 2022 the COVID-19 outbreak was declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).

COVID-19 affects everyone in different ways. People who get infected will have mild to moderate illness and they can recover without being hospitalized.

Most common symptoms:

• Cough and fever
• Tiredness
• Loss smell and taste

Less common symptoms:

• Headache
• Sore throat
• Diarrhoea
• Skin rash
• Irritated and red eyes
• Ache and pain
• Discolouration of fingers or toes

Serious symptoms:

• Chest pain
• Difficulty in breathing
• Loss of speech or mobility

The severity of symptoms ranges from mild to severe. Some people have few symptoms while some people will not have any symptoms at all but they can spread the virus. Such cases are referred to as asymptomatic transmission.

In some cases, people experience severe symptoms and the condition keeps worsening with shortness of breath and pneumonia. This becomes evident about a week after the symptoms begin to appear.

While some people start to experience COVID-19 symptoms after four weeks of being diagnosed. These are health issues post COVID-19 conditions.

Children experience multisystem inflammatory syndrome in some cases. This affects some organs and tissues, after several weeks of suffering from COVID-19. In few instances adults suffer from this syndrome too.

People who are older have a higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19, and the risk increases with age. People who have existing medical conditions also may have a higher risk of serious illness.

In emergency cases COVID-19 signs and symptoms, seek immediate care.

Symptoms in emergency cases are:

• Trouble in breathing
• Continuous chest pain
• Unable to stay awake
• Gray or blue colored skin, lips and nail beds. This depends on the skin tone.

You should seek immediate medical attention in case the symptoms are serious.