Med First ENT Centre

Testing- What Are the Tests for Coronavirus? "Test, Test, Test," said the DG of WHO at the beginning of the Pandemic outbreak. There was and continues to be a very important reason for that -  The virus is highly contagious so one person can infect many others Many patients are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic In this situation, the only way to contain the spread of the disease is to diagnose patients early - before they infect others. The only way to do that is by aggressive testing, diagnosing, contact tracing and then isolating the contacts.  So what are the Tests available for diagnosis? These are of two types Checking for Antigen - for the presence of the virus - indicative of fresh infection. Checking for Antibody- for human response to the infection- indicates recent infection. 1. Testing for Antigen RT PCR - the gold standard for testing for the virus. This test is done not by taking blood but by swabs that are inserted into your nose (dee...

The Corona Virus - SARS CoV-2 causes the disease Covid-19. This is similar to a virus named HIV causing the disease AIDS. Currently, there is no known treatment for Covid - 19. There is an intense amount of research but there is no definite breakthrough.  Molecules to treat diseases take years of testing - Lab, Animal studies, Human trials before they are declared to be fit for human use. The suddenness and the severity of the Coronavirus has given us very little time to develop a new molecule. In this situation various treatments which were successful against Viruses of a similar nature in the past are being tried out - a process called "Repurposing" - a strategy for off label use of known drugs. To understand treatment strategies for Covid-19 we must break the disease into its stages - because treatment is different at each stage. Asymptomatic and Pre Symptomatic patients The good news is that in a large majority of patients there are no symptoms. Apart f...

Is there more than one strain of the Coronavirus? There has been a lot of speculation recently about two strains of the Coronavirus – namely the S and the L strain. The alphabets refer to the names of the Amino acids in the sequence of the virus- ‘S’ denoting Serine and ‘L’ denoting Leucine. The theory is that probably from nearly the beginning of the outbreak in Wuhan the two strains co-existed. The popular theory is that the ‘S’ strain was the earlier strain which was replaced by the ‘L’ strain which had a greater propensity to spread amongst humans, and then the ‘S’ strain returned once physical distancing and other precautions were adhered to. The ‘L’ strain has been blamed for many things - from higher transmission rate to higher virulence to higher mortality rates, though the evidence for this is lacking. The ‘S’ strain is thought to transmit the milder form of the disease. According to the leading experts in the world, however, the evidence for this is lacking ...