Its evil is widespread ... the Corona virus not only kills its patients

Dr.. Osama Abu Al-Rub

With the energy of hospitals, doctors, nurses and all the capabilities of the health system globally directed towards facing the new epidemic of the Corona virus, which causes Covid-19 disease, problems have arisen due to the great pressure on the health sector, so how? Are there solutions?

As the new Corona virus dominates health care systems, people suffering from other diseases struggle to find treatment or family.

Currently, medical resources have been redirected to focus on Corona patients, and the result is that there are other medical conditions you do not find needed, such as blood supply, chemotherapy, or even clinic visits.

According to a report in the New York Times, the Corona epidemic has shaken all aspects of health care, including health services for cancer patients, organ transplants and even brain surgery.

With many patients hospitalized with complications of SK, operating rooms are converted into intensive care units, and surgeons are redeployed to treat people with breathing problems.

Even if there is room for other patients, the medical centers are reluctant to admit them, unless this is absolutely necessary, for fear that they may develop corona or even health workers.

Also, the patients themselves are afraid of putting their feet in the hospital even if they are really sick, they are afraid that they will receive an infection with corona, and they may not report serious symptoms they have from other diseases so they do not have to enter the hospital, and this may mean that they will experience complications and not report them until after it's too late.

Also, many hospitals have suspended unnecessary surgeries and procedures, such as knee surgery, which is understandable. But the problem is that assessing what is necessary and unnecessary can be difficult, and a non-emergency situation may turn out to be a life-threatening issue if it is not dealt with quickly. Or, delaying treatment may cause permanent disability for the patient.

Cancer
In fact, delaying treatment is especially dangerous for people with cancer, and it conflicts with years of public health messages that urge everyone to receive cancer treatment early before it gets worse.

But with the Corona epidemic, doctors say they are trying to provide care for the most urgent cancer cases, not only to conserve the medical resources depleted by Corona, but also to protect cancer patients who have a high risk of contracting a severe illness if they contract Coronavirus.

In America, for example, nearly one in four cancer patients have reported delays in their care due to the Coruna epidemic, including access to personal appointments, imaging, surgery and other services, according to a recent survey by the American Cancer Society's anti-cancer network.

Even among Corona patients,
stress on medical resources threatens Corona patients themselves. Doctors have to choose between those who put them on the ventilator because it has a greater chance of survival, while leaving the "hopeless" cases to die.

Then doctors study factors such as age, pre-existing health conditions, life expectancy, and other criteria to determine which patients will be given priority if there are not enough respirators.

In the end, this could mean that there were cases she had a chance to survive but she did not take, leading to preventable deaths. 

What are the solutions?
We still recognize the virus and learn about it, and up to this point, the required solutions should be able to reduce the pressure on the intensive care units and hospitals due to Corona patients, so that there is room and room for patients of other cases.

Solutions may include the following:

1- Finding a vaccine that is given to millions of people, which gives them immunity from the Corona virus, so that they do not catch it, or if they are infected, the condition is simple and does not require hospitalization, and this thus reduces the pressure on hospitals.

More than 100 potential vaccines are currently being developed, many of them in clinical trials, but experts stress the difficulty of finding effective vaccines against the Corona virus.

2- Finding a cure, which makes controlling the cases of Curna that have already entered the hospital easier, and reduces its complications and the need for ventilators, and the result also provides places for more room for other cases.

At the moment, no cure for Corona virus has been established, and there are treatments subject to experiments that have had some positive results. But these drugs do not give everyone cases.

3- The continuation of the closure policy, in order to reduce the number of new HIV infections and not to put severe pressure on health systems leading to their collapse.

4- Reducing the closure gradually, in order to gradually reach the herd immunity, whose idea is that if you have a new disease such as Covid-19, and it does not have a vaccine, then it will spread among the population, but if a sufficient number of people develop an immune memory, the disease will stop Diffusion, even if not all of the population has developed an immunological memory.

The application of herd immunity to the Corona virus requires that a large proportion of the population be infected between 60 and 70%, and then recover from the disease.

In contrast, public health experts say there is a need to be very careful that new outbreaks occur. "We need to be convinced that it will take some time to get out of this epidemic," says Maria Van Kerkhof, an epidemiologist at the World Health Organization.

5- Trying to understand the mechanism by which the Coronavirus works, and why do some people kill and leave others without even having a mild headache? This helps doctors to deal appropriately with each case in hospital.

Currently, British researchers are trying to study the genes of thousands of patients with Covid-19 in order to answer this question, by tracking the sequence of the genetic code of Covid-19 patients who entered in critical situations and comparing them with the genome (genetic tape) of those who have the disease and that they have symptoms or no symptoms appear on The launch.

The study, which is looking for certain genetic genes that may cause the health of Coved-19 patients, to include up to 20,000 people who are currently treating or receiving Covid-19 treatment in intensive care units.

"Indications will appear in the genetic tape and will help us understand how this disease kills people," Kenneth Bailey, the intensive care doctor who leads the study at the University of Edinburgh, told Reuters.