10 keys to detect symptoms of covid-19 3:23
(CNN Spanish) -
One of the factors that may concern citizens is whether or not they have symptoms of the new coronavirus.
King's College London and Harvard University presented the Covid Symptom Study application, in which users can report their health status and symptoms on a daily basis.
In the case of a positive covid-19 test, they can also report its evolution in the application.
In this episode, Dr. Elmer Huerta gives us details of its operation.
You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform, or read the transcript below.
Hello, I am Dr. Elmer Huerta and this is your daily dose of information about the new coronavirus, information that we hope will be useful to take care of your health and that of your family.
Today we will see how technology can help study the symptoms of covid-19 and try to classify the disease, according to its severity.
One of the pillars in public health is epidemiological surveillance, which aims to know the behavior of a disease in the population, especially when, as is the case in the present pandemic, the disease has the potential to spread.
READ: Coronavirus Symptoms May Last Much Longer Than Initially Thought, Experts Say
In addition to discovering cases, epidemiological surveillance makes it possible to identify the conditions that facilitate the occurrence of the disease, as well as the most frequent symptoms of the disease.
Epidemiological surveillance is of two types: passive, in which health centers, hospitals and doctors' offices are expected to notify the presence of the disease, and active, in which epidemiologists carry out surveys and specific studies in geographic areas or special populations to examine variations and patterns of occurrence of the disease in question.
A revolutionary idea, launched at the beginning of the present pandemic by King's College London and the Harvard University TH Chan School of Public Health, has developed a new concept of epidemiological surveillance.
An application for the smartphone called Covid Symptom Study, also available in Spanish, allows people to report their health status daily and, if it is proven by a test that they have developed covid-19, they communicate it to the center of data.
READ: Coronavirus symptoms: 10 key indicators and what to do
The program is free, anonymous and non-commercial, and requests that each day, using the application, the volunteer report their health status to the database.
How do you use the
app
?
The ingenious and useful thing about this application is that if a person was presenting and reporting some symptoms, then a test is done and it is positive,
the previous symptoms that the person was communicating
are already registered in the
app
.
This allows those symptoms, along with those of thousands of other people who also tested positive, to be analyzed and systematized, providing a better way of knowing the disease.
That's precisely what happened when, thanks to the app, it was discovered that 65 percent of people who tested positive experienced loss of smell, compared to just 21 percent of those who tested negative.
Thanks to the publication of these data, on May 11, in the journal Nature, the loss of smell was included in the list of cardinal symptoms of the disease.
On the other hand, a recent prepublication classifies the symptoms of covid-19 in six groups, which allows somehow to predict who could get complicated.
READ: Coronavirus symptoms: this is the complete list to know when to ask for help
Risk groups
In group 1, it is similar to the flu, but without a fever.
It goes with a headache, loss of smell, muscle aches, cough, sore throat, and chest pain.
In group 2, it is similar to the flu, but with a fever.
It goes with a headache, loss of smell, cough, sore throat, hoarseness, fever, and loss of appetite.
In group 3, they present gastrointestinal symptoms, but no cough, and in addition to headache, loss of smell, sore throat, and chest pain.
There is loss of appetite and diarrhea.
In group 4, it is severe level 1, with fatigue.
In this there is headache, loss of smell, cough, fever, hoarseness, chest pain, and fatigue.
In group 5, it is severe level 2, with confusion.
Here, in addition to headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, cough, fever, hoarseness, sore throat, chest pain, fatigue and muscle pain.
Confusion occurs.
The most serious is group 6 or severe level 3, with abdominal and respiratory symptoms.
Here, in addition to headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, cough, fever, hoarseness, sore throat, chest pain, fatigue, confusion, and muscle pain, there is shortness of breath, diarrhea, and abdominal pain.
The results
Analysis of the data revealed that patients in groups 4, 5, and 6 were two to three times more likely to require respiratory support during their treatment compared to groups 1, 2, and 3.
Furthermore, almost 50% of the patients in group 6 ended up in the hospital, compared to only 16% of those in group 1.
In general, people with group 4, 5, or 6 symptoms tended to be older and weaker, and were more likely to be overweight and pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes or lung disease, than those with type 1, 2 or type symptoms. 3.
Most interesting, however, the researchers developed a model that managed to cross-match symptom data for the first five days of illness with patients' age, gender, body mass index (BMI), and pre-existing conditions.
This model was able to predict -on the fifth day- in which group of the six the volunteer fell, and therefore give him an idea of his risk of requiring hospitalization and respiratory support.
Knowing that most people requiring respiratory assistance go to the hospital approximately 13 days after their first symptoms, and by calculating the risk on the fifth day, those eight days that are gained using the model can allow time for patients to arrive more early to the hospital.
Technology is undoubtedly taking epidemiological surveillance to another level.
Send me your questions on Twitter, we will try to answer them in our next episodes.
You can find me at @DrHuerta.
If you think this podcast is helpful, help others find it by rating and reviewing it on your favorite podcast app.
We will be back tomorrow so be sure to subscribe to get the latest episode on your account.
And for the most up-to-date information, you can always head to CNNEspanol.com.
Thanks for your attention.
If you have any questions you can send them to Dr. Elmer Huerta via Twitter. You can also head over to CNNE.com/coronaviruspodcast for all episodes of our “Coronavirus: Reality vs. Reality” podcast. fiction".
coronaviruscovid-19