Top COVID19 misinformation: Basic FAQs and their answers
It is time we start sharing the RIGHT information!
I am a clinician, a Public health specialist, and I have also been a COVID19 patient. It is almost impossible for general people to differentiate misinformation from evidence-based scientific information. Unless you are a trained medical researcher who can weigh the quality of evidence. A study in 2018 suggested that false news generally travels faster than reliable news on Twitter. Its called the “infodemic of misinformation”. This article aims to beat this infodemic.
In my previous article, I shared how the paranoia around COVID19 slowly and gradually has now become part of our daily lives. People want health information and social media has allowed absolute non-contested non-evidence-based information to be freely shared amongst people. This has created dangerous health-related practices in recent times, the anxiety has pushed people to find solutions on their own and there isn’t much support to address their concerns.
Here the common Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) people ask these days about COVID19 infection:
Question 1: I have a fever do I need to get myself tested for COVID19?
Answer 1: 10 out of 10 people ask this question. Fever is one of the symptoms of COVID19 and not always indicative alone to suggest you have COVID19. Fever due to COVID19 is often associated with other symptoms. The duration and the type of fever are important for the physicians to make the right diagnosis and treatment plan. Fever can happen for various reasons like; infections, inflammation, autoimmune disease, and even cancers. What is critical here, to check all symptoms in a composite manner. If you still feel confused, call a toll-free Coronavirus helpline. You can always start over the counter medicine, acetaminophen is commonly recommended. ANSAID and Brufen were not recommended initially, but that policy has been reviewed and revised.
Question 2: Is it safe to go to hospitals these days?
Answer 2: It is not safe for anyone to go out without a solid reason. Period. You have to take all the precautions as suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO) regardless. If you take all precautions and you have no choice because your body symptoms are not manageable at home, you must visit your Dr or do telemedicine as an option. The same applies to laboratory and other allied health services.
Question 3: Taking multivitamins, Vitamin-C, and other immune-boosting products can improve immunity to protect me from Coronavirus?
Answer 3: There is no scientific evidence to confirm that taking multivitamins will significantly boost your immunity to protect yourself from COVID19. If you have contracted the infection, taking multivitamins may help shorten the duration of disease as it does in the flu. However, If you are non-infected and taking a balanced diet, you don’t need multivitamins. The same applies to children. There is evidence, some immune-boosting products can be harmful if taken in an unprescribed manner.
Grab a peach or a carrot, take some sun, be mindful of stressors, wash your hands, conciously creating a happy moment every day, walking in nature for 20–30 mins and have comfortable deep sleep will keep your immune system strong!
Vitamin D may protect against COVID-19 in two ways. First, it may help boost our bodies’ natural defense and secondly, prevent an exaggerated inflammatory response. I will emphasize here, in the discipline of neuroimmunology there is strong evidence of stress levels and compromised immunity.
Question 4: How worried should I be if I contract the COVID19 infection?
Answer 4: Being worried, pushes up your stress level. Looking at many scientific studies, it shows that clinicians categorize the COVID19 into mild, moderate, severe, and critical stages.
You don’t want to enter into severe and critical disease stages- THIS SHOULD BE YOUR GOAL.
Let your immunity fights back at the early moderate stage of infection. If you are a cancer patient, undergoing dialysis, have heart and lung disease, and diabetes or other immune-compromised diseases than you may be at higher risks of infection. You have to take extra precautions from the beginning and stay in touch with a physician regularly.
The key is to know the steps of how the disease progresses.
Symptoms of Mild illness are:
- temperature (in 90% of cases), a dry cough (may or may not be), tiredness, body aches and sleepy (60%), feeling slightly breathless (10%), muscle pain (15%), headache (15%), sore throat (14%), and diarrhea (4%)
Symptoms of Moderate illness are:
In addition to the symptoms you may get with a mild illness, you may also experience:
- a temperature higher than 38C, feeling breathless when doing moderate exercise (walking upstairs), soreness in your throat but no pain, mild aches around the chest, persistent cough, a headache, tiredness, and a need to stay in bed, a dry mouth, and losing a sense of taste and smell.
Symptoms of Severe to Critical illness are (Please Note: This is the STAGE of caution):
Severe COVID19 patients develop pneumonia, which is inflammation of the lungs, right down into the tiny air sacs.
- Extreme breathlessness — you can’t speak easily, pain in your abdomen/chest area during you breathe, a high temperature, a tight chest, you don’t want to eat or drink, confusion, and bluish lips or face.
By now, you should have the patient admitted to a hospital. Who will assess the situation and classify if the patient needs to be in a high dependency unit where he/she may need ventilator support.
Evidence show the majority of people DO NOT enter in a severe and critical stage of disease. I suggest you should be more worried to NOT pass the infection to others around you, especially elders.
Question 5: How embarrassing is it to have Corona infection
Answer 5: Disease is a fact not a stigma. Not informing people immediately can early spread the infection. Individuals are infectious up to 2.5 days before symptom onset. Our perceptions, lack of knowledge, and hierarchical thinking makes corona infection carry some stigma in some cultural settings. It depends on what kind of understanding you have about the infection at a community level.
Educate people around you, specially those who are not well-informed. In this way, we stay united and connected. Marginalized and poor people need maximum support and care during this time.
Questions 6: Are cloths masked effective enough to prevent COVID19 infection?
Answer 6: After reading many articles, I prefer to answer this question based on practicality and logic as there is insufficient scientific data on this topic:
- Infection through respiratory droplet (cough/sneeze): It is mandatory for health professionals to wear a surgical mask or respiratory, the cloth is insufficient to protect from getting an infection. For the general public, it is not mandatory but if you feel the risk is high I would prefer you to have a surgical mask handy. Especially when going to clinics, hospitals, labs as there are sick people around. Or going to grocery stores or crowded places.
- Infection through surfaces: Only recommended for the general public. It will prevent surface-hand-ear/nose/mouth infection but not necessarily direct respiratory droplets as the virus is a nanometer size. If you do buy a cloth mask, the nature of the fabric and thickness (how many layers?) is important. Sanitizer spray or UV disinfection can be used to clean the masks during breaks in a single day.
An important observation: I have lived for over a decade in the far-east. I saw, many Chinese ethnic people wearing masks out of consideration when they had common flu. I realized, they had a strong sense of responsibility towards self and others. Sense of self-awareness. Just like discipline.
Question 7: Shall I choose to get an antibody test or a Polymerase Chain reaction (PCR) test?
Answer 7: It depends on which stage of the disease are you at. If you are currently having active symptoms, not one but few composite symptoms than it is recommended to have PCR. The infection is most contagious in the early days and has the highest chances to show positive if you are a carrier.
But, if you have already passed the seventh day since symptoms that it is most likely your body has developed antibodies. Generally, the serological antibody test for COVID-19 either shows reactive (positive) or non-reactive (not positive). Sometimes, you want to especially see IgM and IgG as separate antibodies, your Dr will prescribe it that way. IgM appears after 1st week and IgG appears after 2nd week since first the symptoms appeared.
Generally, antibody tests are for community surveillance purposes and PCR of active infection detection.
Question 8: Can we contract the infection through air conditioning (ac) ducts?
Answer 8: If ac is in your room there is extremely little evidence of spread. But, ac ducts fitted in hospitals, grocery stores, and other crowded spaces are potential sources of spread. Few studies have shown, negative pressure traps the air within a confined room and reduces the spread. This is a costly process and not all setups may have this provision, depending on regulations and compliance of SOPs.
Question 9: Is it true that different surfaces will let coronavirus survive for a longer duration than others?
Answer 9: Surfaces touched by an infected person have a higher viral load- which means infected objects can spread infection. Copper surfaces are the best and have the shortest duration (less than 4 hours) of the virus to survive, while plastic surfaces are the worst and coronavirus can survive for up to 6–9days.
As a principle, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, benzalkonium, or sodium hypochlorite chloride solutions will disinfected surfaces. Leave disinfectant on surfaces for 30sec to 2 minutes for effectiveness.
Question 10: Can anyone become infected, becomes a carrier of the virus, and does not show any symptoms?
Answer 10: There has been some discussion around this in the scientific arena. However, there is no concrete evidence for such news. So, as a principle, anyone who contracts the virus will also show the symptoms.
Question 11: There is the second wave expected and it will be more deadly than this one?
Answer 11: This theory is based on the second phase of Spanish flu which happened a century ago and was deadlier than the first. There is a concern, but too early to suggest who bad it will be. Some cases have emerged in China, Newzealand, and Australia. I think let the authorities make the right public health policies on this issue. You as a person should only be worried about normalizing your life, and become positive and create happy memories.
(P.S. I have purposely not mention about the treatment of COVID19. Currently, there are many medical trials that are actively testing different medicines and have shown some effectiveness. Let your Physician take care of this. I Apologies if I have skipped any relevant questions related to this post. Leave a comment if you have any questions in your mind, ill try to add them in this post)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/drsaadkhanz
Instagram: www.instagram.com/drsaadkhanz/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drsaadkhanz
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/drsaadkhan
For more myth busters, click the link below: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters
References:
The epic battle against coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01409-2
Coronavirus Disease 2019: Resources. American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery 2020.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) — Symptoms. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Covid-19: What is the evidence for cloth masks?.” British Medical Journal 2020.
Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 transmission suggests epidemic control with digital contact tracing. Sci 2020.
Persistence of coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces and its inactivation with biocidal agents. J Hospit Infect 2020.
