The taint associated with corona virus can cause more number of deaths, says AIIMS head

Dr. Randeep Guleria, director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, on Thursday, said that dishonouring the COVID victims can have severe consequences. He said that due to the social blot associated with the coronavirus infection, many of the contaminated patients are coming into the hospital only when the symptoms get extreme.

That is, until the patients observe heavy breathlessness or related extremities in signs, they are not getting tested in fear of getting stigmatized. This, in turn, can turn out to be fatal, as this will increase the chances of spreading the virus.

Also, this might decrease the possibility of the infected individual getting cured of the disease. 

Dr. Guleria said that most of the cases, around 80%, need only certain supportive care to recover. And the other 20% require some more enhanced attention, with 5% of them needing ventilators for breathing purposes. 

He requested the families to be supportive and encouraged people to get tested if they experience any related symptoms. The more the number of testing more will be, the ease in getting control over the spread of this disease.

Also, the government has increased the healthcare facilities for COVID treatment by about 3.5 times.

Dr. Guleria said that 90-95% of the infected individuals recover from this virus, and the reason behind the increasing number of mortality is due to the social stigma associated with the disease.

As of now, over 700 people have died due to the novel corona virus in our country. 

He further asked that the recovered patients should be honoured for being brave and getting through a difficult time.

Also, it is not easy to remain in complete isolation for so many days consecutively, surrounded by only doctors and nurses. 

Thus, people need to understand that the disease is not very serious if proper measures are taken.

The thing that makes it complex is the late reaction by the infected victims to get themselves tested.  

Presently, there are in all 3,773 healthcare facilities concerned with the treatment of COVID patients.

This includes 1.9 lakh isolation beds for severe cases. Arrangements for 24,644 ICU beds and 12,371 ventilators have also been made.