Tested positive for COVID-19? Here’s what happens next – and why day 5 is crucial

With cases of COVID-19 on the rise, many another Australians are asking: what happens if I mental testing positive? With zero known cure and no vaccine, what are my treatment options?

Finding trusted answers amid the far-flung insurance coverage of questionable claims and dubious data on unproven treatments is not easy. The good news is there are clear guidelines and growing evidence on treatments that bottom have a dramatic effect along COVID-19.

Here's a snapshot of how this knowledge and counsel is likely to apply to you, if you have mild, moderate or terrible COVID-19.

Testing irrefutable and isolating at home

If you screen positive, you mustiness self-isolate at home. Your local exoteric health service wish contact you with advice and entropy virtually how long you'll need to do so.

If you are similar most masses with COVID-19, you South Korean won't need to go to a clinic or infirmary, and can safely self-manage the illness at home. Even soh, it's important to connect with an appropriate health-care service (either by contacting a dedicated COVID-19 service or by calling your General practitioner) for an initial appraisal and continued contact throughout your illness.

While hoping for a veto result, a empiricism COVID-19 test doesn't necessarily average a trip to hospital. Dan Peled/AAP Image

Initially, you may experience influenza-like symptoms such as cough, sore pharynx, pyrexia, aches, pains and concern. You might temporarily lose your sense of smell and tasting; fewer shared symptoms include sickness, vomiting and looseness of the bowels. Whatsoever your symptoms, you'll need hatful of respite, fluids and paracetamol for aches, strai or fever.

Take detail note of how you're feeling from day quint onwards, As this is the time some people begin to deteriorate significantly. Around 20% of people dawdle into this category, with older people and those with pre-existing health conditions more credible to require hospitalisation. Look out for intense fatigue, difficultness external respiration operating theatre an overall deterioration in how you're feeling.

If your symptoms worsen, you'll need to contact your care provider, or if your symptoms are very serious (such as difficulty breathing), call 000 and ask for an ambulance, and don't forget to tell them you have COVID-19.

What if things relapse still?

If you are taken to hospital, doctors will measure your oxygen levels and perform a chest X-radiation and blood tests to determine whether you have pneumonia (infection in the lungs, which is a sign of moderate or severe COVID-19). If pneumonia, down in the mouth O levels or other signs of severe infection are detected, you'll need to stay in infirmary and volition believably be given oxygen.

If this is the cause, you'll likewise be given a strong opposing-inflammatory medicine titled dexamethasone. This is a wide used, low-cost drug that was new launch to reduce the risk of eager from COVID-19 (by 15% for people along atomic number 8 and by about a third for people on a ventilator). However, for people who are non on oxygen, dexamethasone may increase the risk of expiry — probably because excitement is not so much a big factor at that level of disease — and the side-effects of dexamethasone would overbalance whatsoever potential benefit to those patients.

For moderate or severe cases, doctors may also consider a newer medicine medicament called remdesivir. Earlier developed to treat Ebola fever, this drug has newly been shown to reduce the time to recover from more severe forms of COVID-19 — simply not to reduce the hazard of dying from the disease.

If you become even more ill, these treatments will continue but you may take Sir Thomas More support for breathing, such every bit high-menstruum oxygen or a breathing machine, and will likely be cared for in an intense care unit.

Recovery

Your retrieval depends on many factors, including your previous health and fitness, and how sick you became with COVID-19. The recovery phase is not yet to the full comprehended, merely we do know more or less the great unwashe suffer lengthened symptoms, including outwear, breathlessness, and many-sided and pectus pains.

Every bit scientists continue to grapple with the complexities of understanding and treating this computer virus, we will accept more questions than answers for some time yet.

Fortunately, Australia moved quickly at first of the crisis to establish a Political unit COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce. A coaction of 29 peak national wellness organisations, the taskforce works around the clock to rapidly describe, evaluate and summarise global COVID-19 enquiry findings. Each week, road map panels with more than 200 experts use this evidence to review and update national "living guidelines" to inform consistent, high-quality patient care around the country.

This gait of updating stringent, honest guidelines weekly is a humans first. Any the global headlines or social media profane of the day, Australian health workers will continue to have a man-to-man, accessible source of consistent, evidence-based guidance in a time of great uncertainty.

This story was originally written for The Conversation by Executive Director, National COVID-19 Clinical Demonstrate Taskforce, and Associate Professor, School of Public Wellness and Hindrance Medicine, Monash University

Lead ikon by Russell Tate via Unsplash.

https://hellocare.com.au/tested-positive-covid-19-heres-happens-next-day-5-crucial/

Source: https://hellocare.com.au/tested-positive-covid-19-heres-happens-next-day-5-crucial/