How Hospitals Treat Covid-19 Patients
Have you not contracted COVID -19 virus and wondered how the hospitals will handle you and even treat you? Or, with still no cure found, have you ever wondered how the hospitals treat the COVID-19 patients?
There is lots of information you have not known, let’s dive in!
Overview
What are some of the things that you know about this deadly disease? Well, some of the things that you ought to have known are that COVID-19 is caused by the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).
So many people across the world have been made aware of the COVID 19 symptoms. Do you know them? They include:
You should also know that when you have mild symptoms there are possibilities that you can manage them from your home without the need to visit any hospital. As opposed to this, some other people do develop serious symptoms or even illness that demands for hospital care.
According to the statistics, about 25% to 33% of those who are having been hospitalized due to the disease usually require intensive care. Again, many of those who are hospitalized for COVID 19 have higher chances of recovering.
Even though patients are always taken care of at the hospitals, COVID 19 still has no cure. As you know, the disease is so new to us and even to the scientists and also physicians. They are working day and night around the clock to find effective cure but also there are currently some therapies that are promising in helping the COVID 19 patients.
How Hospitals Care for the Coronavirus Patients
What are some of the cases that require hospital care? When a person is always short of breath, they may need hospital care. The shortness of breath signifies that the lungs are not delivering the required oxygen to the whole body and without a serious treatment, oxygen levels may fall and this situation may trigger organ failure.
Based on what we discussed earlier, COVID 19 having no cure makes the hospitals major on what is called supportive care, or also treatment to support and protect the important body organs. In this case, the doctors and the nurses will always choose to monitor the oxygen supply in the body to ensure that it’s maintained at a better level making the rest of the body healthy.
Again, some other patients do need only the nasal cannula, which is a tube that’s placed in the nostrils to help in the delivery of oxygen. Some other patients also need an oxygen mask that is used in the delivery of oxygen to those patients who require higher concentrations of oxygen.
The hospital staff also monitors the patients’ pillar signs such as heart rate, blood pressure, and number of breaths per minute to watch for any impending problem. For instance, if a patient’s heart rate increases and also their blood pressure decreases, then there are possibilities that the patient might be undergoing a heart problem.
In the above mentioned situation of s heart problem, the doctors will then run tests and also administer IV (intravenous) fluids and medicine to help in supporting the heart’s function.
You should also know that other patients will always be at a position to eat and also drink normally while some also might be too sick to eat. In this case, the doctors and nurses will ensure that the patient receives nutrition directly through the veins via an IV.
Searching for the Coronavirus Cure
Well, up to late November, there were no FDA-approved cures for the COVID-19. Again, the FDA of late permitted bamlanivimab, a monoclonal antibody that always targets the virus’s spike protein.
According to research done, the result proves that the antibody reduced the emergency room visits and also hospitalizations in patients that exhibit mild to moderate COVID 19.
The research further revealed that the bamlanivimab emergency use permission (EUA) is mainly for those patients that have mild to moderate levels of COVID 19 and are also at a higher risk of developing a severe COVID-19.
Again, another cocktail of monoclonal antibodies that EAU received was in November and it is also used for supporting high risk patients who are not hospitalized.
There are also some other drugs that are used by the doctors that may help those patients who are hospitalized with COVID 19, For this case, you need to have in mind that doctors use a variety of drugs and mechanisms in helping those patients with COVID 19.
Here are some of the drugs that you might receive when you are hospitalized with COVID 19:
Antibiotics
COVID 19 is a disease that is caused by a virus; this means that antibiotics that are always used to kill bacteria cannot be used to cure this disease. However, you need to also know that an antibiotic such as azithromycin (Zithromax) shows some signs of antiviral properties.
Steroids
It was also discovered by the Oxford University that opting to treat the patients on ventilators with the steroid dexamethasone heightened the outcomes by reducing deaths by a third.
Antiviral drugs
Well, Remdesivir (Veklur), an antiviral drug that has the potential of killing the SARS-CoV-2 in a petri dish under certain experimental conditions. This was given to EAU by FDA in May and in October FDA approved it.
Convalescent plasma
It was also noticed that if you suffered COVID 19 virus and fortunately recovered from it, your body generates antibodies in your blood that are said to have the ability to fight the virus. In April 2020, FDA started permitting doctors to gather convalescent plasma from the blood of the recovered patients and then administer them to the sick through IV infusion.
Last Words
Although as you read this article there isn’t any cure for the novel coronavirus, hospitals across the globe have been offering treatment mechanisms that have seen many patients recovering from the virus. There are lots and lots of ways that doctors and nurses use to support the high risk COVID 19 patients hence reducing the death toll.