2023-11-14 11:51:32
The Covid variant predominant today in Italy, EG.5, or ‘Eris’, “brings a high fever, for two or three days, which really resembles the flu with some additional pain in some subjects. And therefore as such it goes treated”. Matteo Bassetti, director of infectious diseases at the San Martino polyclinic hospital in Genoa, explains this to time.news Salute. How to cure it? “We use symptomatic drugs: paracetamol, ibuprofen, ketoprofen and aspirin”, he replies.
Symptoms of the Eris variant
“Today, around 50% of infections in Italy are due to ‘Eris’, but there is a great variability that depends on the individual patient: it can in fact be paucisymptomatic in healthy people but also give accentuated symptoms with high fever, there are those They start to lose their sense of smell and taste again, something that we didn’t see with the previous variants. And in some cases it can involve the respiratory tract. Let’s say that these subjects can be treated at home with paracetamol or ketoprofen – explains Massimo Andreoni, scientific director of the Society Italian Professor of Infectious and Tropical Diseases (Simit) and professor of Infectious Diseases at the Tor Vergata University of Rome – But if the subject is frail or elderly he must take the antivirals, Paxlovid and Remdesivir, which also work against ‘Eris’ within 5 days. I remember that this disease can change its characteristics within a few hours and perhaps you have to rush to hospital. In October we had 800 deaths and it would be interesting to know how many were vaccinated and how many underwent treatment.”
“It’s a different disease compared to 2020-2021, then there was a need for a certain type of treatment. Today it’s a different world and the therapies are also different – Bassetti intervenes – when I see antibiotics prescribed for ‘Eris’, azithromycin, cortisone, I think we are faced with a profound ignorance on the part of those who use this type of therapy. ‘Shooting’ in 2023 as they were ‘shooting’ in 2020 is a sensational mistake, therefore – concludes Bassetti – the recommendation to give to people is that this disease is certainly a respiratory infection very similar to the flu or a cold and should be managed as such, except in older people and in the most fragile people where antivirals are used”.
Read also
#Covid #Eris #variant #widespread #Italy #today #symptoms #treatments