Outpatient Covid-19 Treatments

Everybody’s wondering how do I treat this? What do I do? What can I take ahead of time? There’s nothing proven that can prevent the Covid infection or the severity of the infection. There are no treatments for out-patient Covid infections. If you don\’t have symptoms that are severe enough like shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, or your heart racing out of your chest then you probably don\’t need hospitalization. However, you should personally monitor or be watched by somebody in case you do get severely worse.

If you are hospitalized there are treatments available and approved that are IV medications including steroids, Remdesivir, and monoclonal antibodies. These are available for even moderate cases. It’s understandable that people desire to get these kinds of things in an outpatient setting to prevent the infection from getting worse; however, it can’t be made fast enough, it’s absurdly expensive, and it needs to be administered by vein in IV form. Therefore, you need to be in a clinic for an infusion. That means the facility has to be such that if you\’re infected you need to be isolated which is nearly impossible for most places.

Things like hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax are three suggested outpatient treatments for Covid but they’ve all shown no proof of these being effective as treatments. In study after study, hydroxychloroquine has clearly proved to be much more harmful and riskier than good. The side effects of heart abnormalities that are permanent with the drug outweigh any potential benefit.

Antibiotics like Zithromax are not indicated for a viral infection because it’s used to treat bacterial infections. We don\’t want people taking bacterial drugs when you don\’t need them because antibiotic resistance may develop.

There\’s an association but not causation with people that have low vitamin D levels and severe infection or death. That does not mean if you take vitamin D that it will prevent you from getting infected or getting a severe infection. It means those that are deprived of it can be more likely to get more severe stuff. Going out in the sun for 15 minutes a day will give you enough vitamin D without taking a supplement, more than 15 minutes a day will increase your skin cancer risk. Some research suggests if you have low vitamin D levels naturally then you should be taking vitamin D, around 1000 units a day, which you can get over the counter.

The post Outpatient Covid-19 Treatments appeared first on Colorado Primary Health Care.