INDIANAPOLIS – Hospitals are finding a sneaky side to coronavirus which can conceal the most serious cases until it’s too late. Pneumonia makes your lungs stiffen up — that’s why it’s so hard to breathe. But COVID pneumonia deprives your blood of oxygen without doing that, which means you damage more of your lungs.

Community Health chief physician executive Ram Yeleti says that’s why you should get checked out as soon as you have a fever or cough. Although there’s still no known treatment for coronavirus, Yeleti says there are experimental therapies which may have a better chance of succeeding if they’re started early. And he says detecting low oxygen levels early allows doctors to put you on oxygen, in hopes of keeping you off a ventilator.

 

 

 

 

Cover Image by Olga Lionart from Pixabay