On long-term side-effects, govt says could issue guidelines

On Monday, AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria had told The Indian Express that data from recovery of patients with severe infection showed that their lungs continued to be in “bad shape”, and in some case patients continued to have neurological disorders.

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The Centre on Tuesday said it has started a consultative process in this regard and could likely issue guidelines based on experts’ advice.

With hospitals now reporting long-term complications in recovered Covid-19 patients, the Centre on Tuesday said it has started a consultative process in this regard and could likely issue guidelines based on experts’ advice.

On Monday, AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria had told The Indian Express that data from recovery of patients with severe infection showed that their lungs continued to be in “bad shape”, and in some case patients continued to have neurological disorders.

On Tuesday, answering whether the government is conducting a study on long-term implications of Covid-19 being reported in the country, Rajesh Bhushan, OSD to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said the Directorate General Of Health Services, under the Health Ministry, has started a consultative exercise.

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“Doctors from central government hospitals — Safdurjung, RML , and Lady Hardinge — and six AIIMS outside Delhi are providing information about complication developed by recovered Covid-19 patients. On the basis of that information, we may, in future, issue guidelines in the matter.”

In an interview to The Indian Express, Dr Guleria, one of the country’s leading experts in coronavirus response, had said: “There are people who have residual damage. People who have had a stroke (are) neuro-deficit in terms of paralysis, or some part of the body not functioning. We have also seen a number of patients who have severe pneumonia, where lungs get totally scarred. Although they come out, some of them require oxygen at home after recovery. Three months down, CT Scans have shown lungs are in bad shape.”

Dr Guleria also said that the team at AIIMS is studying whether such patients need to be put under a rehabilitation programme after their discharge from hospital.

“Some patients keep complaining of dry cough, which is due to scars in the lung. Some patients, over weeks, have complained of weakness and of not having the energy to go back to work. In some case, there are serious neurological problems,” Dr Guleria said.

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Meanwhile, the Centre said on Tuesday that ICU doctors from across the country treating coronavirus are now being connected to AIIMS, Delhi, to improve clinical management of severe patients, thereby reducing fatality rate in the country. “The national fatality rate is at 2.6 per cent and is rapidly coming down. Compared to the global fatality rate it is significantly lower,” Bhushan said.

On the government’s special intervention, “now two weeks old”, he said, “Every Tuesday and Friday, the group of doctors from AIIMS, through teleconsultation and video consultation, engage with ICU doctors in various states and try to resolve problems they are facing in saving critically ill patients.”

On Tuesday, he said, hospitals from Assam, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar and West Bengal had a teleconsultation with the team of AIIMS doctors.

Kaunain Sheriff M

Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies. With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health. His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award. Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time. Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More

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