“With us, the first Chinese patients, still too many doctors get their treatments wrong”

«After two years of battle against the Covid one thing I would like to say to those who have chosen not to get vaccinated: you are the ones who risk the most in case of illness, do not wait to go to the emergency room, trust the medical profession. If you ask for help too late, it will become even more difficult to cure yourself because no antiviral can be effective after ten days. To some general practitioners who, on the other hand, continue to prescribe drugs that have been shown to be harmful, I say: please don’t. Write it in large letters ».

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Professor Emanuele Nicastri is the director of the Institute’s Division of High-Intensity Infectious Diseases Spallanzani From Rome. On the day dedicated to health workers, it should be remembered that it all started in his ward, in Italy. Even before the Codogno. The Chinese tourist couple was treated at Spallanzani, the first two cases of Covid in our country. It was January 29, 2020 when they were hospitalized.
At the beginning of the pandemic, everyone cheered you. You were the heroes. After two years, you doctors and nurses are often in the crosshairs of a minority that challenges you, even in a violent and irrational way. Isn’t that frustrating?
“It is only frustrating for those who don’t think they are always doing their job according to science and conscience. Whoever does, this is enough for him. Nothing else matters”.
Professor, it has been a terrible two years for you frontline health workers.
«After the Chinese patients and after Codogno we began to hospitalize people who had connections with Lombardy and with Atalanta-Valencia, the game that caused the infection to explode. Whole families came to our wards, we even welcomed suspicious cases. And in the first video call, on February 5, 2020, with colleagues from Wuhan, in which we talked about the conditions of the two Chinese tourists, we received the initial information that was very useful even later. We started using the antiviral drug Remdesivir, which we still use today. Then we used cortisone. That story gave us a model. In the following weeks we also considered other drugs, which we then set aside because we understood that, for scientific evidence, they had to be abandoned. We have had the ability to be critical of ourselves, day in and day out, in the face of a whole new disease. A capacity that unfortunately often fails in the area even today. I see drugs that are not as effective as hydroxychloroquine being used ».

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But do any general practitioners still use it?
“And they use azithromycin: it’s an antibiotic, it shouldn’t be prescribed for an infection that is viral, write this in big letters too. Just as it is useless to use cortisone at home, because the prognosis worsens. Those who receive it at home die more because it reduces the possibility of producing the antibodies that in 95 percent of cases determine the resolution of the disease. Cortisone should only be used when the patient begins to have respiratory failure and must be hospitalized “.
You have learned all this in two years on the front line.
“Today we have oral antivirals, intravenous antivirals, monoclonals available. Luckily we have many weapons that we did not have before ».
However, these drugs only work in the very early stage of the disease. But after two years of working on the front line, how do you live the relationship with the unvaccinated patients who continue to fill the hospitals?
«I would like to speak to all the No vax. They made a choice that I do not agree with in any way, but I try to put myself in their shoes without judging them: if you take Covid, you have no protection, so do not rely on counterfeit treatments at home that do not have support based on scientific evidence. Do not be suspicious of the medical profession, we welcome anyone. Even those who haven’t had a vaccine. I do not agree with your choice, but we doctors know how to treat you ».

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