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some medical experts even claimed that this disease should be renamed "coronavirus cold" or "Omicron cold".
actually?
The new coronavirus was named SARS-COV-2 shortly after it was discovered because scientists found that it caused a viral pneumonia that was prone to severe acute respiratory syndrome like the SARS virus back then.
Therefore, China was the first to call the disease caused by this viral infection new coronavirus pneumonia.
Although WHO was later officially named coronavirus disease-2019, the name "new coronavirus pneumonia" has continued in China.
With the emergence of Omicron , scientists found that this mutant strain is not as pneumotropic as other previous strains, and the risk of pneumonia is much reduced. This is also the reason why Omicron infection is less likely to be severe and more often manifests as upper respiratory tract infection .
However, in the final analysis, Omicron still belongs to the new coronavirus. It is said that dogs cannot change their eating of feces. Low pneumotropism does not mean that there is no pneumotropism. There is still the possibility of developing viral pneumonia or even critical illness after infection.
The most common symptom of COVID-19 is also cough.
In this way, even if you are "well" after being infected with new coronavirus , the possibility of developing or developing new coronavirus pneumonia cannot be completely ruled out.
So, how do we detect the signs of COVID-19 early?
The longer the COVID-19 nucleic acid remains positive, the slower it becomes negative, which means that the virus replicates in the body for a longer period of time, and the risk of infection of other tissues and organs other than the upper respiratory tract will be greater;
If there is fever, physical discomfort, etc., it indicates that the inflammatory reaction will persist for a longer period of time, which also indicates the risk of new coronavirus pneumonia.
A special reminder is that in China, it is customary to collect armpit temperature to measure body temperature. The fever standard set by armpit temperature is higher than 37.3-37.5℃.
In fact, many people have a fever when their armpit temperature is far below this threshold. If this fever standard is applied rigidly, it is easy to overlook the existence of low-grade fever and delay the early detection and diagnosis of the disease.
In particular, when a cough persists and the dynamically measured body temperature rises after a continuous drop, if the physical discomfort worsens, it often indicates the possibility of recurrence of inflammation.
Of course, once pneumonia occurs, the lung ventilation function will decline, the inhaled oxygen cannot be fully exchanged into the blood, the blood oxygen saturation will drop, and the parasite will become hypoxic.
Young people who do not have chronic respiratory diseases or heart disease are very sensitive to this kind of hypoxia that they have never experienced before, and they will suddenly have symptoms of hypoxia such as chest tightness, shortness of breath , breathlessness, and even palpitations (palpitation). Once these symptoms appear, you should be highly suspicious of COVID-19 and seek medical treatment promptly. COVID-19 can be easily diagnosed by taking a chest CT scan.
What needs to be vigilant is the elderly, especially those with chronic lung disease and heart disease. Since they have been on the verge of hypoxia for a long time, their bodies are not sensitive to hypoxia. In addition, the immune response itself is weak, and the ability to clear the virus is also weak. It is often not easy to detect COVID-19 in time, and it is easy to develop into fatal severe or critical illness silently.
This is why these elderly people need to monitor pulse oximetry to detect hypoxia and potential pneumonia early.
Does coughing up yellow sputum mean bacterial pneumonia?
Another thing to be vigilant about is that respiratory tract infection may also be complicated by bacterial infection of the lower respiratory tract, that is, the possibility of bacterial pneumonia.
Some people say that as long as yellow phlegm appears during coughing, it indicates a bacterial infection and requires antibiotics treatment.
Is this true?
otherwise.
Cough after virus infection, including cough after COVID-19 "Yangkang", the sputum coughed up during this period usually goes through a change process. It starts with coughing up thin sputum, and then the sputum will gradually thicken and become difficult to cough up, and the color will also turn yellow or yellow-green.
This usually does not mean that yellow phlegm is purulent sputum, nor does it mean that bacterial infection has occurred.
The appearance of yellow phlegm is mainly because the epithelial cells responsible for secretion of the respiratory mucosa are damaged, the secretion capacity is reduced, the secreted mucus is reduced, and the sputum is concentrated.
As the inflammation subsides, the damaged cells are repaired and regenerated, the secretory function will gradually recover, the secreted mucus will increase, and the sputum will change from yellow and thick to white and thin sputum that is easy to cough up.
Therefore, coughing up yellow phlegm usually does not mean that a bacterial infection has occurred, but is just a procedural change in the repair process of respiratory tract damage.
When you really need to be alert to the signs of bacterial pneumonia, you will cough up a large amount of purulent sputum, which can be yellow, white, or green in color. At the same time, it is often accompanied by the recurrence of fever, with the highest body temperature even higher than the previous period, and accompanied by general discomfort.
Once this happens, you need to seek medical treatment promptly and conduct a series of examinations to rule out or confirm the possibility of bacterial pneumonia.
For example, in addition to chest CT that can directly see inflammation in the lungs, routine blood tests have also shown that the total number of white blood cells and of viral infection has not significantly increased or even decreased, and the proportion of lymphocytes and has increased; it has become a "bacterial infection blood picture" with a significant increase in the total number of cystic cells and a significant increase in the proportion of neutrophils; at the same time, blood C-reactive protein will also increase significantly.
Once bacterial pneumonia is diagnosed, medical guidelines should be followed and antibiotic treatment should be standardized.
In China, many doctors use antibiotics based solely on the experience that "coughing up yellow phlegm means bacterial infection." This is a major reason for the abuse of antibiotics.
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