A top neurology professor has shed some light on the effects that people have experienced following warnings from experts that Covid-19 can cause neurological complications.
Researchers at the University College London last week said that the virus could cause complications including stroke, nerve damage, and potentially fatal brain inflammation, even if the patients didn't show severe respiratory symptoms associated with the disease.
Dr Hadi Mandji who is a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neuroscience in London was a joint senior author of the report spoke of how Covid-19 can affect the brain and signs which doctors should look out for in patients.
Speaking on RTE's Today with Sarah McInerney he said: "We knew this coronavirus had potential for affecting the brain and then when the first reports came out from Wuhan."
"One was delirium.
"In a more serious case one happens to get confusion and disorientation. And this phrase of loss of brain power is a very good one where there is a malfunction of the software.
"In the patients that we studied, they were all in hospital, but the degree of chest symptoms varied.
"Sometimes patients presented with neurological symptoms and the chest symptoms were very minimal or came later on. And these were episodes of brain inflammation or strokes.
"One of the messages from our study was that doctors seeing patients with neurological symptoms need to consider Covid-19 as the underlying trigger for these neurological symptoms."
Professor Sean Gaine, consultant respiratory physician at the Mater Hospital, added that while many people can get through the virus relatively unscathed special care must be taken for those who struggle to recover
Speaking about the symptoms of the virus he said: "There's a few core features. Fatigue, ongoing breathlessness, the sharp chest pains.
"Every patient is different, the patterns are different."
"Most people end up getting this and getting through it avoiding hospitalisation and they get back to themselves perfectly well.
""But there is a smaller percentage who still have ongoing issues.
"There's no doubt this virus has had far more deep rooted affects on the body beyond the simple respiratory affects and we just need to be vigilant for those things and not panic people. Most people will do well but to be on guard and investigate when they're not getting better or suddenly changing."
Professor Gaine added that we are likely to see people having different recoveries from the virus compared to other countries due to the different approaches taken by Ireland to treat people compared to others.
"We'll see something different in the way people experience the after affects of having had Covid.
"We weren't overwhelmed like the Italians so we had a little more time to work with people and explain what was going on. We had the capacity within the system to manage some of the problems that perhaps would have overwhelmed a patient in other circumstances."
