Post-Covid care centre to come up at PGI

Naina Mishra

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 10

The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) is going to set up a post-Covid care clinic for patients who have recovered from the illness.

Dr Jagat Ram, Director of PGIMER, said: “We have discharged a number of patients and we want to have a follow-up to know whether there are any problems persisting in them. There are many Covid-19 patients with co-morbid conditions such as heart disease, kidney failure or diabetes. We want to see whether any adverse effect of Covid-19 is still persisting in these patients or not.”

“The virus neutralises in two weeks but it may leave some complications. The clinic will help to examine any sequel in these patients. We are yet to identify the site for such patients. However, the post-care centre will have doctors from various disciplines, including pulmonologist, internal medicine etc,” he added.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has also asked Covid care hospitals and centres regarding the national Covid-19 registry that whether there is any provision of a Covid-19 follow-up clinic at the hospital. “It has been observed that a few Covid patients, who completely recover and even become RT-PCR negative after treatment, later on suddenly die of cardiac arrest or stroke. This could be due to the silent inflammation of the blood vessels or blood clots in their blood vessels feeding the vital organs. Lately, it was observed that a few recovered patients had post-Covid lung fibrosis (damage caused by the infection that leads to scarring of lungs), thereby necessitating the need for a dedicated post-Covid care facility to offer them timely medical care,” said Dr Mandeep Garg, who is Professor in the Department of Radiodiagnosis and Imaging at the PGI.

West Bengal had come up with post-Covid follow-up clinic model in June.

Why it is needed

Dr Jagat Ram, Director of PGIMER, said: “We have discharged a number of patients and we want to have a follow-up to know whether there are any problems persisting in them. There are many Covid-19 patients with co-morbid conditions such as heart disease, kidney failure or diabetes. We want to see whether any adverse effect of Covid-19 is still persisting in these patients or not.”

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