A new phenomenon amongst some Covid-19 patients which has been dubbed 'happy hypoxia' is leaving doctors battled.
Medics say some people suffering with the disease have been able to sit up and talk and scroll their phones despite having dangerously low oxygen saturation levels.
Two Manchester based doctors have spoken out about the "abnormal" phenomenon and have warned it could be deadly.
Most physically well people would have a normal blood-oxygen saturation of around 95 percent.
However, doctors treating people with Covid-19 say for some patients this can drop into the 80s, 70s and 60s with other more serious cases even lower.
For other respiratory conditions this would normally cause complications such as breathing difficulties or even people losing consciousness.
But in some Covid-19 cases, the patients can be breathing comfortably sat up in bed and in no visible distress despite their saturation levels being dangerously low.
It has been dubbed 'happy' or 'silent hypoxia' - hypoxia being where part of the body is deprived of oxygen.
“It’s intriguing to see so many people coming in, quite how hypoxic they are”, Dr Jonathan Bannard-Smith, a consultant in critical care and anaesthesia at Manchester Royal Infirmary told the Guardian.
“We’re seeing oxygen saturations that are very low and they’re unaware of that.
"We wouldn’t usually see this phenomenon in influenza or community-acquired pneumonia.
"It’s very much more profound and an example of very abnormal physiology going on before our eyes.”
Dr Mike Charlesworth, an anaesthetist at Wythenshawe hospital told the paper: “We just don’t understand it. We don’t know if it’s causing organ damage that we’re not able to detect.
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"We don’t understand if the body’s compensating.”
He said he believes he experienced it whilst suffering from the virus himself at home.
“I was sending very strange messages on my phone. I was essentially delirious," he said.
"Looking back I probably should’ve come into hospital.
I’m pretty sure my oxygen levels were low. My wife commented that my lips were very dusky. But I was probably hypoxic and my brain probably wasn’t working very well.”
A number of doctors have said they believe it could be potentially dangerous that people with hypoxia could go undetected and that the phenomenon was being seen as "ominous."
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