The Viral Test

Covid-19 exposed the many chinks in our armour. And even as our overburdened health system is learning on the go, it is bracing itself for the after-effects of Covid-19

- Namita Kohli

Dr Priyadarshini Singh, head, accident and emergency department at Delhi’s Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals says this is simply “unprecedented”. Comparisons with other viruses seem unfair. “With swine flu, recovery was a consolation. People got cured and went home,” she says. With Covid-19 though, even recovery does not seem to guarantee much. Since the early days of the pandemic, the Union health ministry has been projecting high recovery rates for Covid-19—93.52 per cent as of November 18. Doctors, however, say they are bracing for the next big challenge—among those who recovered from a severe bout of Covid-19, some end up coming back to the hospital.

Hospitals struggling to cope with the deluge of Covid-19 patients are also trying to handle the additional challenge of post-Covid issues with special clinics. At Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, for instance, doctors are baffled by a small percentage of post-Covid cases where the patient reported no co-morbidities, implying that even the ‘healthier’ among us are not particularly insulated from the serious effects of what experts term ‘long Covid’. The pulmonology team has treated four such cases in people with no co-morbidities in September. One of them, as Singh recalls, proved to be particularly challenging.