More than 45,000 people are currently considered to be actively infected with SARS-Cov-2 in Austria. Most of them, 43,000, are not in hospital but in home care. But if you have stronger symptoms, you should start treating the disease with medication at home – in consultation with your family doctor, several prominent physicians tell Ö1. Blood thinning with heparin is largely undisputed, but treatment with cortisone is more controversial. The use of a pulse oximeter to measure oxygen in the blood is also recommended.
Blood thinners useful
Covid-19 can initially cause tiny thromboses in the smallest vessels in the body. On the other hand, something should be done as early as possible, says the former medical director of the Vienna Hospital Association, Wilhelm Marhold: “This microthrombosis and the obviously immunologically triggered inflammation that takes place there” can, like all diseases, be treated much better in the early stages than when they are has already fully erupted. In the early stages, general practitioners could treat the disease with low-dose cortisone and low-molecular heparin blood-thinning syringes, says Marhold.
Split opinion on cortisone
Yes to heparin – but not for mild, but only for severe courses or high-risk patients, say Innsbruck clinic director Günter Weiss and Susanne Rabady, head of the general medicine department at Karl Landsteiner University. They advise against administering cortisone. That only makes sense if the immune system overreacts: “In the early phase of cortisone, however, it can also have the opposite effects, because of course the essential work of the immune response against the virus is suppressed. That means that it should not be too early, and not too early, in any case not before the seventh day after the onset of symptoms. “
Measure oxygen levels in the blood
Doctors strongly recommend drinking enough, as this is often forgotten. And it makes a lot of sense to get a pulse oximeter from a doctor or pharmacy to check the oxygen level in the blood on your finger. Sick people often feel very late when this oxygen level has long been too low and then go to the hospital too late. According to Weiss, if the oxygen content falls below 95 percent, hospitalization should be considered urgently.
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