We’re 7 months into this pandemic and a lot longer since Covid-19 broke out in China. With real time data and new trends still coming our way in relation to the virus.
Doctors and experts have made certain discoveries since February 2020 which increases our chances of survival in comparison to someone who might have been infected with the virus earlier this year.
Initially, Covid-19 was thought to cause deaths due to pneumonia and therefore, the ventilators were considered the best way to treat patients with breathlessness.
However, now it is known that the virus causes blood clots in the blood vessels of the lungs and other parts of the body which causes the reduced oxygenation. With this knowledge it has become apparent that providing oxygen by ventilators will not help a huge deal.
Another trend prevalent earlier was that patients would die even before reaching a hospital. This happened due to reduced oxygen in their bloods, caused by something known as “happy hypoxia”.
But now, due to the awareness of happy hypoxia, oxygen saturation of all covid patients is being monitored, allowing doctors time to correct the oxygen deficiency in the blood.
In the beginning, we did not have drugs to fight the coronavirus. Doctors were only treating the complications caused by it and hence, most patients became severely infected. Now, there are two medicines called Favipiravir and Remdesivir which are antivirals that can substantially weaken the coronavirus.
A lot of Covid-19 patients initially died not just because of the virus but also due the patient’s own immune system responding in an exaggerated manner called cytokine storm. Along with killing the virus, this also kills the patients.
Today, there are medicines available called Steroids, that doctors around the world have been using for almost 80 years that can be used to prevent the cytokine storm in some patients.
Overall, experts and research show that there is a better chance of surviving the COVID-19 infection now in October 2020 than in March 2020.