NEW DELHI: Director of AIIMS, Delhi Randeep Guleria on Monday said Covid-19 patients with mild symptoms should not rush to get a chest CT scan, and warned that it may do more harm than good.
A single Computerized Tomography (CT) scan exposes a person to the same amount of radiation he or she would get from 300 to 400 X-rays. This raises the risk of getting cancer later on in life, especially for youngsters.
Guleria also cautioned against the use of blood tests for biomarkers by people with mild symptoms. He also sought to discourage the use of steroids, when not required, as it suppresses the immune response and may aggravate the course of the disease in many people.
Union Health Ministry officials meanwhile pointed out that some states including Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Punjab are showing early signs of a decline in the number of daily new cases.
“Some other states, however, are showing increasing trends in Covid cases and these states should take required precautionary measures,” said Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the ministry.
The states showing rising daily infections include Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, and Meghalaya among others.
India’s overall fatality rate stands at around 1.10 %, the health ministry said. About 12 states have more than 1 lakh active Covid cases, seven states have about 50,000 to 1 lakh cases, while 17 states have less than 50,000 active infections.
According to the ministry, 12 states have started vaccinations for people between the ages of 18 and 44.