COVID-19

Covid-19 disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus - findings to date

A disease induced by a new type of coronavirus related to the virus that has triggered SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) disease in recent years.

Here's what we know about it so far: 90% of those infected have an asymptomatic or mild course, which poses a risk for the rapid spread of infection, has 5x-10 times higher death rate (ration of the number of deaths to the number of patients with this disease) than influenza, but data from individual areas vary, RT PCR diagnosis done by nasopharyngeal swab. There is no specific treatment. Virus mainly transfers through droplets. Contagiousness is comparable to influenza.

Promising medication: remdesivir, dexamethasone in severe course, convalescent plasma (plasma from donors who have had Covid 19 disease).

Prevention - the most effective: proper wearing of face masks, hygiene of coughing and nose blowing (cough into the sleeve, blowing your nose ideally into disposable tissues - after use throw away), washing hands, keeping the distance and limiting gathering.

Patients do not excrete viable virus for more than 8 days, therefore, isolation after diagnosis is recommended for 10-14 days without subsequent control testing. Immunity after the disease is still a matter of research, so far we know that the presence of antibodies to the virus in some patients is weak or short-lived. Children are affected significantly less than adults. The median incubation period is 5-6 days.

What is the reproductive number R? - The average number of other people infected by one infected person.

The most common symptoms: fever, cough, sore throat and runny nose (more rarely compared to influenza), temporary loss of smell and taste - here the data on the frequency of occurrence differ in individual authors.

Finally, I quote from the article Epidemiological characteristics of covid‐19: a reflection on current knowledge about the disease Doc. MUDr. Dana Göpfertová, CSc.1,2; MUDr. Kateřina Fabiánová, Ph.D.

This dangerous disease will clearly remain in the world's population, and it needs to be accepted and gotten used to, just as our generation has become used to AIDS, the post-war generation to hundreds of thousands of measles epidemics, thousands of epidemics of paralytic poliomyelitis, and pre-war generations to murderous epidemics of diptheria or tuberculosis. Yet the societies of the time did not collapse, and the world did not stop, and it should not be stop even now. A really strong enemy has emerged recently, but we are optimally equipped as never before to fight the new contagion.

Therefore, it is not advisable to neglect preventive or therapeutic care in other areas of medicine, but it is necessary to adhere to all measures to limit the spread of infection on the basis of existing knowledge.

Source: Pharmacotherapeutic revue published on the website of the Czech Medical Chamber.