A patient who died last week. Let’s learn how corona infection can lead to death within a week. Limited information available on patient restricted me from adding more required details.
May 16 – Patient felt headache and caught mild Fever.
May 18 – Patient faced Little breathing issue, and started with anti biotic zpack.
At this stage, family and patient realised it could be Corona Virus. From here onwards, every day and every hour was crucial for timely treatment.
They still waited to contact hospital which proved deadly later on.
May 20: Fever was rising and reached 104.
May 21: Patient was admitted in hospital. Oxygen level was checked and found at 94. Doctor diagnosed severe case of pneumonia, but signs of improvements could be seen.
May 23: Oxygen level 96, patient was still getting better.
May 24: Early morning, hospital called family to ask their permission to put patient on ventilator since oxygen was dropping continuously.
Same day, patient died in couple of hours on ventilater, scarring of lungs found due to extreme pneumonia.
Analysis:
1.Fever was taken as just a normal fever for 2 days without considering corona virus. Today, if we have fever or cough, we should assume that it’s Corona till proved otherwise through Corona test. These two days were important and lungs started getting effected and self treatment with anti biotic did not help. These two days also resulted into family getting infected with Corona from the patient. Immediate quarantine was required here to save rest of family members.
2.After 5 days, from first sign of Corona in the form of fever, patient was taken to hospital. This was crucial, loss of 5 days had adversely effected the lungs already.
3.After patient was improving, why suddenly hospital staff thought to put the patient on ventilator and still patient died within hours after putting on ventilator. Here seems to be some negligence on the part of hospital, they could not timely see the deteriorating condition and was too late to put patient on ventilator. Corona patient cannot be attended by a family member and patient is totally at the mercy of hospital staff and any negligence will go unnoticed even if it is resulted in death. That’s another sad part of corona treatment.
4.I am not sure if ever any of our health departments whether at any level created such awareness where each patient condition “day to day” could be shared for public awareness to make people better prepared about the required actions. I also feel sorry that even no part of media attempted such awareness.
Still this commentary is insufficient as i don’t know details of treatment given from 16 May till 25 May at home and later at hospital and what could be right suggestion in this regard.
In Coming days, I don’t think hospitals will be available to save patients due to capacity issues, which leads us to a serious question – Have we thought about individual level treatment & handling options for a Corona patient without support of hospitals? This situation is coming soon, it’s critical that “first aid”kind of self treatment awareness is created to meet this most likely scenario.
To save a life, we can take even any remote & untraditional option, but do we know what are those remote options? Who will advise public? Who will create awareness? Clock is ticking since 3 months. We must improvise our treatment strategy to save lives.
Let’s deliberate these questions at all provinces and regions and especially on media:
Have we discussed the role of private hospitals & pharmacies once govt hospitals will fall short of capacity? We must encourage private hospitals to have Corona treatment, availability of ventilator and isolation rooms. We must educate pharmacies to provide first aid treatment to corona patient with right advise & medicine.
Have we created awareness about home quarantine?
Are we preparing for bigger quarantine centres? in case of further spread.
Herd Immunity cannot be our option, it’s the nature’s option
When human fails to contain a pandemic and will be achieved when virus will infect 70 % population of Pakistan. Herd immunity in Pakistan means losing 10-20 million people.In my humble opinion, it’s criminal to talk about herd immunity as a strategy.
