It is a new lease of life for lawyer Sripathi Prakasam, who has been fortunate to recover from the dreaded coronavirus. But his neighbour R. Venkateswara Rao, a yoga practitioner, was not so fortunate as he succumbed to the viral disease after undergoing oxygen therapy for almost a month following a severe lung infection.
The latter, who had been teaching Pranayamam to students, had even taken two doses of the vaccine. Yet he contracted COVID-19 and succumbed to it, recalls his brother R. Subramanyam, a school teacher. The same was the fate of a sales executive G. Venkataramana Rao, who got infected days after taking the jab and spent about a month in the intensive care unit of a private hospital before losing the battle against the disease. He also suffered from a comorbidity, recalls his widow Padmavati.
Mr. Prakasam, who also suffers from a comorbidity, says early treatment helped him stage a recovery. "Even now I have difficulty in breathing and experience fatigue frequently," he says after a morning walk.
Prakasam district has a very high recovery rate of 98.05% with over 1.30 lakh patients returning home by overcoming the virus. But a good number of patients, including those suffering from hypertension and diabetes, experience pulmonary fibrosis, says Government General Hospital (GGH) Superintendent D. Sreeramulu. Initially, GGH reported hundreds of black fungus cases but the incidence has now come down to a great extent, he says. Oxygen facility has been provided to 1,500 beds at the hospital now and 120 ICU beds arranged to handle any rush of patients, including infected children, he tells The Hindu.
Multiple issues
Many patients, a few weeks after discharge, report nose block, watering of eyes and numbness of cheek. Some of them also experience pus formation in gums and unilateral facial pain, says Dr. Namineni Kiran Kumar. Some of them require reconstruction of upper jaw and eye balls, he adds.
Post-COVID complications required treatment jointly by an ophthalmologist and a facial surgeon in some cases. "There has been no end to my woes," laments a 26-year-old Srinivasulu who had to access a crowdfunding platform for a costly eye surgery post COVID recovery.
The number of coronavirus cases in the district has crossed the 1.33 lakh mark. The incidence, however, has come down to over 100 cases a day now and almost an equal number of patients get cured during the same period. Over 1,040 patients succumbed to coronavirus in the district so far, according to health officials.
