Complications from coronavirus are catastrophic - GMA

Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), Dr. Titus Beyuo has stated that the complications from COVID-19 after treatment are numerous, very devastating, and catastrophic to the system.

He said this in an interview with Berla Mundi on the New Day show on TV3, Tuesday, February 16.

Dr. Beyuo emphasized that treated patients do not need a test to prove that they have recovered because current data shows that after two(2) weeks of the infection they are no more a danger to society since they cannot transmit the virus to others.

“What we don’t know or haven’t explored fully is how much of a danger you are to yourself, so you may not be a danger to society because you cannot transmit the virus to others, therefore no need to quarantine or to isolate you.

“But the damage caused by this virus can be catastrophic, can be devastating to our system. And so some of these people have recovered, they’ve gone home but the normal thing is to remain in touch with the health care system, you go that you’re completely cured, therefore you don’t go for further check-up because doctors will schedule check-ups for you” he said.

He also said that it is true some patients get reinfected, which means that whatever immunity they got from the first infection did not last long enough to inoculate them from reinfection but rather die from the very first complication from their first infection.

“So the complications are numerous, in fact from head to toe, you can get complications everywhere, to start with one of the commonest complications is fatigue. People who recover from COVID, in one systematic review meta-analysis that was done, about 48% of them have chronic fatigue, they are always tired and then loss of energy so what they were able to do, they cannot do anymore, you can see someone who is even an athlete, who could do a hundred-meter sprint but can barely do a ten-meter sprint without gasping for breath”.

“And then we have the CNS (Central Nervous System) ones, there we are talking about the brain and the nervous system, one of the common things there is reduced mentation or cognitive function, some of these people apart from having headaches, headaches, headaches, they lose some bit of memory, they have attention deficit, so someone who was very sharp, very articulate, thought process is excellent, all of a sudden they struggle to remember things as a result of COVID. The person may be talking and in the middle of a sentence they can’t remember the word they are supposed to say and data have been recorded where people have forgotten their friends and some become slow in speech, all of these can come from it (complications)” he disclosed.

He further disclosed that “if we go into the respiratory system, of the chest problem, difficulty in breathing will be there, then on the heart muscle itself, there’ve been documented damage onto the heart muscle and that explains why a lot of the people are not able to become active again after recovering from COVID. In the lungs, images have shown fibrosis, or damage to the lung tissue, that will reduce, in essence, the capacity of oxygen you can take in and use as a person to do your daily activities”.

“One of those that kill people now is either they get kidney shutdown or some come in with a massive clot because the damage done by this virus is to cause blood to clot in the system, a living human being should not have a blood clot in the system but if you have a blood clot in your blood vessel and is dislodged from there, it can go up into your lungs and shut it down and then you’re dead” he revealed on the New Day.