The Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic has caused large-scale upheaval in ordinary lives of people in China, claiming over 1000 lives and infecting over 43,000 people.
Doctors and researchers are trying to find a solution, even as the Coronavirus outbreak shows no signs of stopping just yet.?
Published first in the journal Radiology recently, doctors at a hospital in Lanzhou, China, shared chest x-ray of a 33-year old patient who was affected with the novel coronavirus. In case you didn’t know, the Wuhan Coronavirus, much like SARS, causes pneumonia-like symptoms with people facing acute issue while breathing.
The x-ray released by the doctors revealed white patches in the lower corner of her lungs -- something that doctors call as ‘ground glass opacity.’
According to radiologists, the white spots when zoomed-in look identical to glass pieces that have been ground up. This basically signifies fluid in lung spaces. Commonly, doctors consider this as pneumonia.?
However, when looked closely, the ground glass patches extend to the edges of the lung -- an occurrence that’s not seen often. Similar traits were found in SARS and MERS -- the two deadly kind of coronaviruses detected in the past in China and the Middle East respectively.
Another shocking difference between a coronavirus and pneumonia is at the speed they progress. Pneumonia is slower in progression as compared to coronaviruses and get easily treated by antibiotics.
In conclusion, the best way to detect the presence of coronavirus in a patient isn’t through an x-ray but instead through swabs of saliva or mucus or testing a patient’s phlegm to get accurate results.
But this too happens when the patients start showing symptoms, and by that time it gets too late. Patients have been tested in initial stages for coronavirus which show no presence of the virus, but three days later same tests reveal presence of the virus in the body.?
The coronavirus is wreaking havoc in China, severely affecting lives of not just citizens, but also doctors and medical practitioners who are providing constant care and support to the ever-rising number of cases.