COVID-19 comes with unending fever, exhaustion: Survivor

Mind-numbing fever, an inability to concentrate, depression, dizziness and a general sense of simply slipping away. This is some of the things that most COVID-19 patients experience, said Venkataraghava P K, a resident of R R Nagar who is the first coronavirus patient discharged in the city after making a complete recovery

Beset by burning fevers which ranged to 102.5 F early in the mornings during his time in quarantine at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases (RGICD) in Jayanagar, Venkataraghava described the dawn of those days as an ordeal.

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“The mornings were the worst. I had to put a wet cloth on my head to control the spike in my body temperature. Then the medical staff would introduce a paracetamol IV and the strength of the fever would drop down to a temperature of 100.5 F for the rest of the day. But it would never break,” explained Venkataraghava who added that the enduring fever often sapped his strength and left him depressed.

In the midst of such battles with the virus, medical staff discovered that Venkataraghava’s sugar levels were spiking. “Once, it rose over 340. It was alarming,” the techie said.

He said that Dr. Deepak U G, the nodal officer-in-charge of the isolation facility moved to introduce medication to bring the sugar levels under control.

Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths

“I'm not a diabetic, but they were treating me like one. I had to take medicine three times a day. But they knew what they were doing. My sugar levels stabilized,” he said, adding that medical staff explained to him that spiking sugar levels is the net outcome in viral fever.

Venkataraghava next said he began to focus on dealing with the fever. “It was the longest fever I have ever had in my life - it lasted 15 days. That fever kept grounding me down. At times, I felt like I was simply sliding away,” he said.

Although COVID-19 has no dedicated treatment, the Minister of Health Education, Dr K Sudhakar, explained the government had developed a single protocol of care for the entire state.

“This is basically a symptomatic treatment. We treat cases with Tamiflu, which we also used for H1N1. And it has proved effective. Most patients have recovered,” Dr. Sudhakar told DH.

Venkataraghava said he was being administered a variant of Tamiflu called StarFlu - one 75mg dose in the morning and one in the evening. He said that he was also being administered with a general antibiotic to prevent a secondary infection such as ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) or pneumonia, which causes fatalities in COVID-19 patients.

“Recovery is much harder if a patient slips into pneumonia. If that is prevented, the fever can be managed,” he said.

Depression

The one weakness in care, according to Venkataraghava, was insufficient counselling to address depression.

Dr. Rajani P of the Department of Health and Family Welfare, who helped consul Venkataraghava and is the state in-charge of Mental Health said that the government had taken cognisance of this and had scaled up counselling.

“Throughout the state, more than 150 mental health officials are telephonically counselling all the people who are in-home quarantine and in hospital isolation. There have been 16,000 consultations since March 11,” she said.