COVID-19, the
official name for the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has been commonly
described as a respiratory disease – one that primarily affects the lungs, and
kills in a similar way to pneumonia.
Coronavirus
patients are being treated by doctors wrongly, a new research has indicated.
The
researchers said the doctors are prescribing the wrong treatment because they
understand the virus infection to be a respiratory disease.
But doctors
involved in the new research said the coronavirus is also a blood vessel
disease, which explains why COVID-19 patients have experienced heart attacks,
blood clots, and other ranging symptoms.
As doctors
became more familiar with the disease, many noticed that COVID-19 patients
suffered damage to a worrying range of vital organs across the body including
the heart, brain and kidney.
Now, doctors
say that the evidence is growing that coronavirus is also a vascular infection
– one that can infect blood vessels – which would explain the range of symptoms
it causes.
“All these
Covid-associated complications were a mystery. We see blood clotting, we see
kidney damage, we see inflammation of the heart, we see stroke, we see
encephalitis [swelling of the brain],” said Dr. William Li, speaking to
Medium’s Elemental+.
“A whole
myriad of seemingly unconnected phenomena that you do not normally see with
SARS or H1N1 or, frankly, most infectious diseases,” added Dr. Li, who is the
president of the Angiogenesis Foundation, a nonprofit organisation that studies
how to fight disease through the process of developing new blood vessels.
Dr. Mandeep
Mehra, medical director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Heart and Vascular
Center, told Medium that these symptoms suggest that the virus is probably a
“vasculotropic virus, meaning that it affects the [blood vessels].”
“The concept
that’s emerging is that this is not a respiratory illness alone, this is a
respiratory illness to start with, but it is actually a vascular illness that
kills people through its involvement of the vasculature,” Dr. Mehra told
Medium.

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