But what is the outcome of this summer blaze due to the new variants of Omicron? What is the face of yesterday’s 59 deaths and 338 sick people who crossed the threshold of a Covid center. What are the symptoms, the need for assistance and care given that the 261 people currently hospitalized in intensive care today are the highest number since May 29th ?. “The patients are all over 65 on average – he explains Novella Carannante infectious disease specialist, medical director of the Cotugno emergency room in Naples – the first symptom is a high fever that lasts for two or three days and does not always respond to drugs to lower it. Then there are symptoms of a typical seasonal systemic virosis different from what we saw in the first waves ». Now, instead of pneumonia, diarrhea, abdominal and joint pains, exhaustion and other systemic symptoms such as sore throat and cold prevail which become prevalent and dangerous only in patients already undermined by other pathologies, in particular frail patients, the elderly, cardiopaths, suffering from bronchopathies, obese, dialysis, oncological and immunosuppressed. “It should also be said Carannante continues – that those who are worse off are those who are not vaccinated by choice or due to health conditions who still develop dangerous pneumonia and with a more marked involvement of the lower respiratory tract or those who have had the last dose and recall in November and last December. For example, I do not have any respiratory symptoms but I had a very high fever that did not come down with the classic anti-inflammatories but disappeared by itself after two days. But now I have great asthenia and pain and still intestinal symptoms. I believe that the disease has profoundly changed and is taking shape today and also in the future, as a seasonal cyclic virus that will accompany us for years along with other similar viroses we live with. I believe that the vaccine – he concludes – is still protecting us a lot and that it is essential to limit the damage of this Coronavirus “.
And those who are hospitalized in sub intensive? «They don’t necessarily have a compromised respiratory picture – he replies Giuseppe Fiorentino primary of the Cotugno sub intensive – at the moment we mainly have patients suffering from other chronic diseases to which Covid overlaps as a complication. Mostly over 75 years of age and oncology under treatment with primary or secondary immunosuppression. Also present were some patients who were not vaccinated by personal will or for other serious copathologies that prevented prophylaxis ». Patients often arrive after several days of home positivity due to persistent fever or other symptoms but after careful evaluation they return home remaining in contact with the hospital doctors. Pneumonia in these departments are still present and progressive but there are clearly fewer cases to be intubated although some cases evolve into generalized sepsis and general decompensation “. Healthy and vaccinated subjects who end up in intensive wards are no longer seen »concludes the Pulmonologist. Many young people also arrive in hospitals, almost all with a high fever and who as a precaution ask for a visit and then go home or stay for a few hours for observation.