COVID-19: How these new symptoms add new challenges to the TN experts?

While fever, breathing difficulty, and dry cough have been the initial, common and primary symptoms among the COVID-19 patients, the Tamil Nadu state health department officials have later found out that the Influenza-like illnesses (ILI) like fatigue and sore throat have commonality among the virus hit patients and now they have got additional symptoms to add in the list to ascertain the infection and these symptoms include discomforts and disorders like the sudden loss of taste or smell.

The recent identifications have pushed the taskforce to meet new challenges on containing the spread of COVID-19. The health officials are considering the sudden loss of these senses as more accurate symptoms for the infection. 

According to Dr. Prabhdeep Kaur, the deputy director of the National Institute of Epidemiology and who is also part of Tamil Nadu's medical experts' committee, the loss of taste and smell are more specific symptoms. By citing that the list of positive symptoms has to be expanded, she stated that fever has not been recognizable in ascertaining the suspected cases of COVID-19.

According to the medical experts' committee, 'many COVID-19 patients in Tamil Nadu have developed and complained about the disorder of losing the sense of taste and smell. The committee is considering this disorder as one of the parameters for COVID-19 infection as this disorder is common among the other viral infections'. However, alarmingly, the new symptoms have added new challenges for Tamil Nadu to identify and locate the infection and carriers at the early stage to contain the rampant spread.

In the absence of a vaccine or a drug, Tamil Nadu must rely on carrying out aggressive testing, which has been advised by the experts' committee to the state government. The experts are instructing the government to carry out more and intensified testing in the wake of the new symptoms. The committee has advised the government to perform 18,000 tests per day -10,000 in Chennai and 8,000 in the rest of the districts to curb the spread and rapid transmission.

According to the reports, the state must roll out new testing protocols to deal with new symptoms like respiratory distress, and the disorder of losing the sense of taste or smell. The government has to add more strategies on testing from what it has done initially. It must put all symptomatic and asymptomatic people with all sorts of travel histories into aggressive testing. 

It also must test the contacts of high-risk patients, the influx from other regions, and individuals with influenza-like illnesses to ascertain whether they have developed the symptoms that are in the checklist of COVID-19 infection as the carriers of these symptoms could posses a risk of spreading the pandemic among the vulnerable groups including people with comorbid conditions and elderly people.

The government must isolate the symptomatic and asymptomatic people and their contacts at least for 14 days either under the institutional or home quarantine. Tamil Nadu is doing the highest number of sample testing in the country currently. The state has tested 5,44,981 samples so far as of Thursday and Tamil Nadu is the second Indian state to report the most number of cases -27,256 cases so far after Maharashtra, according to the Union Health Ministry.
 

Also read: COVID-19: TN has crossed the tally of 27,000 while Chennai nears to hit 19,000!

 

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