“Oxygen therapy, vitamins, steroids and low molecular weight heparin (blood thinners), when used at appropriate stages under medical supervision, make for an excellent recovery rate. People should not panic over the shortage of remdesivir in Pune, Rajhans said.
Infectious disease expert, Parikshit Prayag, said, Remdesivir only shortens duration of illness in carefully selected patients - like those with early hypoxia (low blood oxygen saturation) or high-grade fever with lower respiratory involvement. This impression, that it is life-saving, makes a patient desperate and anxious when she or he does not get it. Unfortunately, many people are being unnecessarily put on the drug.
PUNE: Despite a steady rise in Covid cases every day over the past eight days in Maharashtra, the number of deaths have not risen in the same proportion during the same period. While daily infections went up by over 50% from 4,092 cases on February 14 to 6,971 on February 21 fatalities actually went down: As many as 35 deaths were reported on February 21 against 40 a week ago.
State disease surveillance officer Pradip Awate said the death rate in the state has been going down on a week-on-week basis. “In fact, in the last week, the death rate in the state was less than 1%,” he added.
COVID survivor turns saviour with 9th plasma donation
COVID survivor turns saviour with 9th plasma donation
ByVicky PathareVicky Pathare / Updated: Feb 21, 2021, 06:00 IST
Munot, 50, has enough neutralising antibodies in his blood that make him fit for donation; PIC: RAHUL DESHMUKH
Marketing consultant Ajay Munot, who has donated blood more than 40 times, probably recorded the maximum number of
plasma donations in the country since coronavirus pandemic hit last year
With the number of
COVID cases coming down in the city,
donations for plasma have also gone down but Ajay Munot is an exception. On Saturday, the 50-year-old marketing consultant has earned the distinction of having donated plasma the most number of times nine. It is probably the highest number of plasma donations in the country.
Medical experts in the country have called for an urgent rethink of a key term that is in use to describe Covid-linked lung damage. ‘Post-Covid lung fibrosis’ indicates lung scarring after an infection, but doctors now believe it is wrong to call every Covid-triggered lung scarring ‘fibrosis’.
They say fibrosis is lasting damage from a lung infection or injury that usually doesn’t heal easily, but lung scarring in a majority of those who have recovered from Covid-19 (as much as 90% of cases) has gone away completely, with lungs resetting to normal. The term fibrosis could trigger alarm and it is time to carefully grade severity of impact, doctors now say. The Indian Radiological and Imaging Association (IRIA) is even thinking of replacing ‘post-Covid fibrosis’ with a more “apt term” in chestcomputed tomography (CT) scan reports. IRIA national president Deepak Patkar said ‘post-Covid interstitial lung disease’ (PC-ILD) or ‘post-Covid ILD’ would seem “more