New Delhi: The second Covid-19 wave has hit healthcare in states real hard. With several states reporting very high hospital bed occupancy and increasing mortality, governments are working hard to increase testing capacity and airlift essential medical supplies. With the continuing surge in Covid-19 cases in India, the demand for medical oxygen and hospital beds has hit a record high.
To know more about oxygen cylinders, Remdesvir injection, and covid vaccines, CitySpidey had a live session with Professor and Doctor GC Khilnani, Chairman, PSRI Institute of Pulmonary, critical care and sleep disorders. He discussed vaccination, medicines, and the Covid-19 new strain, etc.
The session started with some questions related to vaccines which have been introduced like Covishield, Covaxin and Remdesivir injection.
He answered, “There are different vaccines; vaccines are for prevention which develops antibodies in your body to protect you from disease. When you’re getting vaccinated, the substance of the virus is being injected to build antibodies. Vaccines for Covid-19 are developed using Whole-Virion Inactivated Vero Cell-derived platform technology. Inactivated vaccines do not replicate and are therefore unlikely to revert and cause pathological effects. They contain dead virus, incapable of infecting people but still able to instruct the immune system to mount a defensive reaction against an infection.”
The efficacy of Covishield is 70-90% but 30% still can get affected. But the death rate is less. He even added, “Making of vaccines takes 8-10 years, but as this was the pandemic situation we have to work as quickly as we can. These vaccines will protect you till 6 months.”
Moving forward, the second question was if you’re affected by Covid-19, do doctors prescribe these vaccines or medicines or there are some different vaccines and medicine for that? He answered, “These vaccines are for prevention but for treatments there are Remdesivir, Hcq, and many more.”
He added that the characteristic of this new strain is pneumonia and it makes your oxygen level less. The term came from Italy known as Hypoxemia - “a decrease in the partial pressure of oxygen in the blood.” As blood oxygen levels begin to reduce, a person may experience shortness of breath, also called Dyspnea. If blood oxygen levels continue to fall, the organs may shut down, and the issue becomes life-threatening. This is why so many deaths were happening because patients didn’t realise that their oxygen level is going low.
He even shared that Remdesivir is not a life-saving drug and not everybody should be given this injection. Patients only who have pneumonia and have low oxygen should be given this injection and stocking. Overuse of these injections has caused a shortage in Remdesivir.
He even said, “People who have been suffering from diabetes, cancer or any other serious disease should stay at home and safe.” He added that people won’t die due to shortage of Remdesivir but shortage of oxygen and corticosteroids.
In January, people started to think that Covid had come to an end and people started doing parties, going on vacations and weddings started with lots of gatherings. People started taking it lightly and that’s why this second wave got carried away.
In the end of the discussion, he said, “The main transmission of Covid-19 is airborne, you need to be very careful regarding this situation. Always wear a mask, don’t remove it.”
Watch our live session to know more about it.
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