December the 5th, 2020 – A KB Dubrava doctor, Bruno Barsic, has described the ongoing situation at KB Dubrava, now known rather ominously as Zagreb’s COVID hospital, and how those working there have never seen a disease take such a course before.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Bruno Barsic, a KB Dubrava doctor, spoke for RTL Direkt about why healthy, young non-smokers are ending up in hospital needing oxygen and about other topics related to the spread of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.
When asked what was happening on the tenth, eleventh or fourteenth day of this particular illness and why people’s condition was deteriorating so abruptly, he said:
”Because this is the natural course the disease takes in what is, fortunately, a small percentage of patients. There are a lot of infected people, so then that percentage of course becomes higher. The course of the disease goes so that it begins as a flu-like stage. After about 5-6 days, you see the first stage of the worsening of the condition, and then it becomes pneumonia, oxygen is then required. For those who need 14, 15 litres of oxygen from the beginning, it’s impossible for oxygen to enter the blood. The next stage of it growing yet worse in some patients is lung damage. The blood vessels dilate, then people’s lung function worsens,” he said.
He said the disease leaves long-lasting changes in the lungs. When asked if we are smarter now and if we know why young people get sick, he says:
“We aren’t smarter now to know why this happens to young people. Maybe it’s the amount of virus they’ve taken in. If you receive a smaller amount of the virus, you’ll probably have a milder clinical picture. That’s why there are masks to protect us. We haven’t seen a disease take this sort of course before. We saw swine flu, that was also a new disease for us. But we haven’t seen such long-term changes occur in the lungs, nor have we seen these consequences with which we don’t know how long-term they’re going to be,” he says.
To the conclusion that treatment for SARS-CoV-2 lasts a very long time, he said:
”That all depends on the patient. Some people can go home in a couple of days, some need over 20 days. When it comes to drugs, we’re not much smarter. The drug we’re talking about isn’t particularly effective. Now there’s a growing need for inhibitors,” the KB Dubrava doctor concluded.
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