Covid-19 Severe Side Effects

Crisis

Dr Julie Helms, intensive care team leader at Strasbourg University Hospital shares her experience with dealing with severely impacted patients suffering from the SARS-CoV-2 respiratory virus. It was an abnormal situation where all patients mainly in there 30s to 40s were extremely agitated. There was no logical reason who individuals to be suffering a respiratory disease to have mental impacts. Every patient in the ICU had some sort of confusion or delirium.

Dr Julie Helms found this intriguing that led to her study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. She documented that Covid19 patients suffered from neurological symptoms, more precisely known as “encephalopathy” or symptoms countering damage to the brain. A similar study based on Wuhan also noticed Covid19 patients to suffer from mental diseases. Now there are over 300 studies from around the world linking Covid19 to cause neurological symptoms in patients. SARS-CoV-2 virus not only impacts the brain, emerging studies show that the virus also has impacts on the heart, kidneys and liver.

Some individuals suffering from Covid19 will never display symptoms of the virus but suffer neurological diseases therefore will not even get tested for the virus which further complicates the matter. However, from the beginning of the pandemic, one thing was crystal clear, SARS-CoV-2 is a unique virus not just a virus that causes the common cold. Even its mortality curve has no similarities with its ancestors such as influenza. For unknown reasons 70% of its severely infected victims are males and the virus have a nil impact on children. Dr Julie Helms is curious to find more about SARS-CoV-2 virus in the upcoming months, by then hopefully the world would have a developed vaccine for it.