How should the elderly be monitored after being infected with COVID-19? What symptoms need to be treated in a timely manner... In view of the treatment problem of the elderly infected with COVID-19 that netizens care about, the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council invited Li Yanming, director of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine of Beijing Hospital, to further interpret.
Why is the elderly a high-risk group for severe infection?
Li Yanming introduced that the cold weather in winter is the season of high incidence of respiratory infectious diseases. The elderly are vulnerable and high-risk groups of severe respiratory infectious diseases. Winter is also the season of high incidence of influenza, and its severe cases also occur in the elderly. In addition, the current COVID-19 infection is affected by many factors, and the proportion of severe cases in the elderly after infection is significantly higher than that in other people.
How should the elderly be monitored after infection?
Once the elderly have fever at home or COVID-19 infection, we must strengthen monitoring, especially strengthen the attention of family members. Because the elderly may not react so obviously to the body abnormalities compared with the young. For example, some elderly people have a temperature rise, and they do not know that they have a fever.
Li Yanming introduced that the elderly infected with COVID-19 may have "silent hypoxia". His family thinks his breathing state seems to be OK and stable, but his blood oxygen saturation may have been relatively low. Remind the friends accompanying the disabled elderly to monitor the elderly's temperature, heart rate, pulse, and changes in peripheral oxygen saturation. If these indicators are relatively stable, it may not matter much. If there is a decrease in blood oxygen saturation, in particular, see a doctor in time. The earlier you go to see a doctor, the greater the success rate of treatment.
After the infection of the elderly, what conditions should be treated in time?
If you are an elderly person living alone, you should know your overall situation, including basic heart rate, blood pressure, pulse rate, respiration, and peripheral oxygen saturation. You must closely monitor them and see a doctor in time if they get worse.
Pay attention to the changes in the general living conditions of the elderly, such as whether they can eat well, how about their urine and urine, whether they have incontinence, and whether there is a significant decrease in the amount of urine.
Pay special attention to the mental state of the elderly. Li Yanming introduced that, because the elderly sometimes cannot accurately express their discomfort, if the elderly appear obvious lethargy, communication barriers, disorientation, do not know where they are, and express no logic, these are all dangerous signals.
Li Yanming said that if the symptoms of fever, cough, dyspnea and other symptoms persist or worsen after an elderly person infected with COVID-19, including the obvious mental state, they need to see a doctor in time; If there are some new abnormalities, such as no dyspnea in the past, and now there is dyspnea, you also need to see a doctor in time; Elderly people with basic diseases such as COPD, asthma, diabetes, coronary heart disease, etc. are prone to get worse once they are infected. When basic diseases get worse, they also need to see a doctor in time.
Li Yanming reminded that the elderly who are over 80 years old and whose basic diseases are particularly serious, and who are not well controlled at ordinary times and have not been vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccine, once infected, their families should be more careful when observing and caring for them, and should see a doctor in time if problems occur.
