For doctors who work on the front line in intensive care, the Covid-19 patients who are hospitalized in these wards are no less serious than those who arrived in March or April
by Marzio Bartoloni
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For doctors who work on the front line in intensive care, the Covid-19 patients who are hospitalized in these wards are no less serious than those who arrived in March or April
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The cases of contagion have returned to rise in the last few weeks, returning to the levels of May, but with far fewer deaths and even fewer admissions to intensive care which in any case have doubled in the last 10 days from 66 to 121. It is proof that the virus, as some experts and observers also claim, he has become better and therefore less aggressive? For anesthetists and resuscitators, doctors who work on the front line in intensive care, the reply leaves no doubt: “The Covid-19 patients who are hospitalized in these wards are no less serious than those who arrived in March or April”.
The warning of those who work in intensive care
“We are not convinced by what some have said in recent months that the virus has become less aggressive. The epidemic curve is moving up, as are ICU cases, which have a lower average age. Fortunately, we are far from the red alert level of the months of March and April, thanks to social containment », he warns Alessandro Vergallo, national president of Aaroi-Emac, the association of Italian hospital resuscitators in practice, doctors who work in intensive care units where the most serious Covid patients are hospitalized. Vergallo underlines how “the epidemic curve is rising, and so is the number of people hospitalized in intensive care” with a fundamental clinical fact, namely that “Covid-19 patients who are hospitalized in these wards are no less serious than those arrived in March or April ».
Because fewer deaths and serious cases than in March
If at the moment the virus is the same as last March, then why in the face of infections that are similar to the levels of early May there are hundreds of fewer deaths? An answer comes from the fact that some important factors have changed since the beginning of the epidemic and also the ways in which people are hunted for those who are infected. As shown by the latest reports produced every week by the Ministry of Health and the Higher Institute of Health, the age of the infected has significantly lowered: if before the Covid patients were above all the over 60s, now the age has halved, with the average of cases which dropped to 29 years. A novelty, this, which has caused asymptomatic cases or in any case the number of people with lighter symptoms to explode because, as known, Covid hurts more among the elderly. Compared to March, the way to find the new Covid positives has changed radically: if in March only the symptomatic swabs were made, now in addition to doing many more tests (we have been over 100 thousand for days) 60% of the cases that are discovered they come from the tracing of positive cases or from screening activities (rapid swabs, serological tests, etc.) which reveal many asymptomatic patients. A fact, this, which also allows you to discover Covid patients early, thus being able to treat them in time if necessary and which photographs the progress of infections in a more realistic way than in recent months when many asymptomatic people did not end up in the network of checks and the official number of cases was just the tip of the iceberg.
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