What are we sick with today, have the symptoms of COVID-19 changed and why have forgotten viruses returned to the country? How to treat the new variants of the coronavirus? Awake studio theme tips on "New TV" said infectious disease specialist Trifon Valkov.
"Covid-19 was expected to return in the slightly colder months of the year and expected, of course, to increase incidence. However, this did not happen, and the predictions of the institutions in Europe monitoring the dynamics of the virus did not come true. The current spread variants of the coronavirus do not follow this cycle, and respectively we report not only in Bulgaria, but also in Europe, an increase in the number of patients a little earlier than expected", explained Dr. Valkov.
In his words, this is "one example that viruses are unpredictable". "Being sick with COVID-19 today means that in a huge percentage of cases, these are people who, in one form or another, have sought medical help. That is, they have developed some symptomatology, which means that there is an even greater number of people who, for one reason or another, may have come into contact with some source of this infection, contracted this virus, but not showed the symptoms", he emphasized.
According to him, "viruses are indeed becoming much more contagious, but there is also something that should not scare us". "The reassuring thing for us is that following the trend of the virus becoming more infectious, mutating, gaining the ability to be transmitted more easily from person to person, this goes hand in hand with the inability for it to generate a severe, inflammatory response. That is, the virus becomes milder as a clinical picture occurring in the human organism. Because it is not activated as strongly, which is harmful to itself - thus it stops its own transmission from person to person," the infectious disease specialist explained.
And he added: "The symptoms are like those of a milder upper respiratory tract infection. First, fever, stuffy nose, development of a catarrhal symptom of the upper respiratory tract, dryness in the throat and an initially dry cough that turns into a wet one. One of the most common symptoms is mild fatigue, which is reported by more than half of the patients," said associate professor Valkov.