Beware, self medication could be dangerous: Medical experts

Hyderabad: Medical experts believe that the self medication to treat COVID-19 could be extremely dangerous. In view of the surging deaths in the second wave of Corona pandemic, the experts are apprehensive that majority of the people are resorting to self medication instead of going to doctor or hospital.

The trend of self medication is increasing due mainly to avoid paying exorbitant treatment charges or fearing death.

Similarly, people are apprehensive of showing their symptoms due to baseless fears. Even in cases of fever, cough, cold and body pain the patients are not visiting doctors and resorting to medicines which apart from being dangerous could lead to spread of the Covid virus among others.

There are also harmful side-effects of self-medication like digestive issues seen in patients who take antibiotics or steroids on their own,” said Dr Rahul Agarwal, consultant for internal medicine at Medicover Hospitals.

Five days of continuous fever is a telltale sign of Coronavirus and complacency in such a case could lead to the infection spreading in lungs, said Dr. Agarwal.

There are some patients who are worried about the positive result of their test after 14 days of treatment. The experts believe that there is no reason for the patient to panic if a retest shows a positive. It could be due to the residual RNA in the nasal mucosa or it might even be a false positive.

However, in such a case medication is not required as infection after two weeks is highly unlikely. Testing and retesting is sheer wastage of resources.