Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[jai_in_canada]

A relative of mine (in her 80s) vaccinated with one dose of Covishield started showing some symptoms. A CT scan showed Covid like damage of 30% but her O2sats were in the 90s all through. Based on this indication that it was covid, her doctor started her on dexamethasone and she is responding to it. Interestingly, her RTPCR test came out negative. Her doctor insists that it is Covid and that the test gave a false negative. Anecdotally, this episode shows that even one does of vaccine does protect under severe form of Covid.

Interesting. Negative on RT-PCR and good serum O2 saturation and yet the physician was sure that she had Covid-19. How was he/she so sure that it was Covid-19? Glad that she's on the mend.

[jai_in_canada]

I had around end January when cases in India were at their lowest. I am fine now. One week was tough.

Glad to know that you are better, Rajit. Never a good time to get it, but better that it happened in Jan when cases were lower. And glad that the treatment protocol worked. Apparently this treatment with aspirin and anti-coagulants has been known to be effective for some time in some countries, and has now caught on in India.

[suresh]

Interesting. Negative on RT-PCR and good serum O2 saturation and yet the physician was sure that she had Covid-19. How was he/she so sure that it was Covid-19? Glad that she's on the mend.

His basis is the chest CT scan. Covid effected lungs show `ground glass opacity' that was present in her CT scan.

[Kumar]

Once u are diagnosed with COVID, I have seen the following steps

The full blood test, CT scan if u have cough. If your D-Dymer level is more than 500 or 0.5(forgot the unit), they immediately start you on anti coagulants as well in addition to other medicines

I think different places and hospitals have different procedures, but I think they always take ct scan in Chennai. While in Bangalore, some hospitals do take ct scan immediately while others tend to wait until u have related symptoms.

Please do not take this directly without checking with the doctor, but the Apollo home care regimen included broclear,fabiflu, symbicort inhaler 4 times a day,steroid medicine, vit d, multi vitamin, antacid, cod liver capsules. Not sure if this was given initially or after CT scan,

The key blood markers are D-Dymer and C-Rep! High numbers for this markers get more attention.

The most interesting, they do not take RT-PCR to consider u COVID free. Essentially if it is 14 days since COVID test(or start of symptoms, forgot)) and u don’t have fever, they consider u non infectious and u no longer need to be isolated.

My interesting observation is giving steroid and antiviral at the same time. I had read that timing of steroid is very critical and may need to be given a little later (not at onset) so that u don’t tamp down body’s immune response. In one case, they started steroid, two days after having symptoms which was very surprising.

[suresh]

Trying to get second doses for my parents over the next few days. Private places do not seem to have the vaccine in Chennai. Got an appointment for my mother at a government hospital for tomorrow. Hope that works out.

[jayakris]

Trying to get second doses for my parents over the next few days. Private places do not seem to have the vaccine in Chennai. Got an appointment for my mother at a government hospital for tomorrow. Hope that works out.

There is horrible shortage going on, I think. We have done just 2 million doses in the last two days, total! .... I am not sure what the heck the manufacturers are doing. This seems like serious screw-up from Modi, ICMR and possibly vaccine-makers too. It has been 4 months since two vaccines were approved and at least around 3 months since they announced the plans to do 600 doses by end of July. They needed to have planned for 650M or 700M doses by then, which means there should be at least 200 to 225M doses manufactured by now for India use (forget the 100M expected for the world by now). But only about 170M has got into our stocks, and there is only about 10M or something that they are working with, for the next few days, apparently.

Two weeks of unexpected demand for 25M each could not have caused such a terrible shortage. They needed to have expected at least 25M to 30M per week by now anyway, to hit the planned target of 600 in 5 months (20 weeks). Some serious screw-up in planning, or so it seems. The press is clueless and seems to think that it is because we have a Covid surge going on. No, it has nothing to do with the surge, as far as I can see. Yeah, maybe more people are running to get vaccinated, but the Government was planning to somehow get them to get past hesitancy and herd them to the booths, so as to vaccinate 300M people by July anyway. So the higher demand actually is only making their job easier. But no vaccines available. What gives?

I have not heard Modi give any vaccine numbers (has he?) like Trump, Biden, Boris etc. I don't think he has screwed up in the first phase of Covid management until early this year, but I have to think that Modi totally took his eyes of the vaccine matter... Or ICMR and niti-aayog who advice him, did not press him.

What is going on? The vaccine production matter is actually fairly simple numbers. Not rocket science to plan, and those like Modi (not known for intellectual brilliance to set policy) should be able to handle the top-level decision on the numbers. The logistics is very complicated, but it looks like plain production is the problem now; not logistics .

[Atithee]

Isn’t there a raw materials shortage that Londonwalla had tweeted POTUS about? Don’t know about the other manufacturer. Probably same parts. I’ve read even the vials are in short supply, affecting other critical vaccines that are needed in even larger numbers every year, e.g., kids’ vaccines.

[jayakris]

Isn’t there a raw materials shortage that Londonwalla had tweeted POTUS about? Don’t know about the other manufacturer. Probably same parts. I’ve read even the vials are in short supply, affecting other critical vaccines that are needed in even larger numbers every year, e.g., kids’ vaccines.

Aadar is playing games. I don't trust that dude. But anyway the raw material shortage was a predicted shortage for manufacturing after late May, and not for production so far (if I understand it correctly).

Meanwhile, Aadar, who was supposedly crying about our Govt not giving him money, is now investing in UK vaccine production (as per Boris)? These are big money games, and with the so-called "vaccine mafia" possibly existing in some form, we are probably not seeing the full picture of what is going on.

[jayakris]

@ANI tweet: The need of RTPCR test in healthy individuals undertaking inter-state domestic travel may be completely removed to reduce load on laboratories. All asymptomatic individuals understanding essential travel must follow COVID appropriate behavior: ICMR

Good idea! Should've been done a while ago.

[Kumar]

Modi got carried away by election fever and took his eyes off the ball w.r.t vaccine.

SII was supposed to ramp up to 100 million a month by May. I am guessing they had some internal issues, which made that impossible. We were just too dependent on SII. We should have pushed Bharath Biotech to expand its capacity in Feb itself.we may not see surplus production until September. Hopefully import of Sputnik will alleviate and push us to 80 million a month instead of projected 60 million

https://www.bharatbiotech.com/images/pr ... ldwide.pdf

Lot of states had suspended their vaccine drive this past weekends due to shortage. My guess is that we will probably be close to 2M today.

We could potentially end up around 385k for today. This is slightly lower than our Saturday total of 392k (previous working day). More than a month since this has happened. Tomorrow is a big day and we will know if the drop will be sustained.

[Kumar]

Trying to get second doses for my parents over the next few days. Private places do not seem to have the vaccine in Chennai. Got an appointment for my mother at a government hospital for tomorrow. Hope that works out.

Consider having your mother double mask or even wearing a face shield in addition to mask. Myfriend suspected his father got COVID 19 when he tried to get second dose at private hospital.

[jai_in_canada]

Trying to get second doses for my parents over the next few days. ....

Consider having your mother double mask or even wearing a face shield in addition to mask. Myfriend suspected his father got COVID 19 when he tried to get second dose at private hospital.

Happened to someone I know when they went to get the first shot. So good advice to double mask.

[jai_in_canada]

Once u are diagnosed with COVID, I have seen the following steps
...
The most interesting, they do not take RT-PCR to consider u COVID free. Essentially if it is 14 days since COVID test(or start of symptoms, forgot)) and u don’t have fever, they consider u non infectious and u no longer need to be isolated.

I wonder if there is evidence to back that assumption.

Which brings me to a question that has bugged me right from the beginning. How are recoveries determined and reported? It's easy to record a case thru positive RT-PCR, but are they following up with every single positive case until they have been deemed recovered from Covid-19?

[jayakris]

Which brings me to a question that has bugged me right from the beginning. How are recoveries determined and reported? It's easy to record a case thru positive RT-PCR, but are they following up with every single positive case until they have been deemed recovered from Covid-19?

Yes, they are following up, but without 100% success, or probably not even 50% I assume. They are supposed to follow up until they show a negative on RT-PCR, as per ICMR's "strict" guidelines. There was that classic case of a woman in Kerala who was tested 24 times or something till they finally got the negative on RT-PCR, which drove the hospital people crazy... Again, it is India, so there will be cases where the patient simply disappears and nobody knows if he/she is recovered and nobody did any test to confirm it. That is why India's recovery numbers come very quickly. You see a certain case number on a day, and you get pretty much that number some 7 days later. Many are simply assumed recovered, as there is no info on them after they tested positive. They try to call people to check, and apparently only some half of the phone numbers they have on record works! We have a great country that is flexible on everything, where nobody knows how to do anything too strictly by the book.

[rajitghosh]

Since I have gone through this for home quarantine you are by default declared as recovered after 17 days