The Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute (VPCI) has set up a Post-Covid Respiratory Management Centre to treat the people who experience fatigue and other symptoms after recovering from the infection.
Delhi University Acting Vice Chancellor Prof P C Joshi on Monday inaugurated the centre located on the varsity premises.
Joshi said although VPCI has been taking care of post-Covid patients since long, the centre will provide holistic approach for managing patients who recover in future.
Those patients who manifest symptoms even four weeks after COVID-19 are labelled as post-Covid, a statement from VPCI said.
It has been given many other names like “post-COVID-19 syndrome” or “long COVID-19” or “Long Haulers”. Around a quarter of people who have had COVID-19, irrespective of the severity of the disease, experience symptoms that continue for at least a month but one in 10 are still symptomatic after 12 weeks, the statement said.
VPCI Director Professor Raj Kumar said he symptoms and prevalence of long Covid variable in different studies. The common symptoms of long Covid reported include fatigue, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, cough, joint pain, chest pain, impairment of memory and concentration ( Brain Fog’) or sleep problems, muscle pain or headache, fast or pounding heartbeat, loss of smell or taste, depression or anxiety, persistent fever, dizziness on standing, worsened symptoms after physical or mental activities, etc.
The Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) had written to Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and Joshi to convert VPCI into a Covid care facility last month.
“The VPCI, with its infrastructure, has the possibility of this expansion. We request that the ministry explores and invests in this institution and develops it into a Covid facility. It will not only bring relief to hundreds of teaching and non-teaching employees and their families who live on the campus and students who live around the campus but also to residents of the North-West zone,” the letter had said.
Rajib Ray, DUTA president said, “We had demanded a Covid care centre on April 27. Instead of that centre, today, around 4 pm, a Post Covid Respiratory Management Centre wing of V P Chest Institute was inaugurated.” Former Executive Council member Rajesh Jha called the inauguration of centre a “way to deceive the varsity community”.
“Which medical institute is not post-Covid institute these days? VPCI is already referral institute for chest. So, what is new which the administration is inaugurating? They are just trying to cover up their own failure during Covid second wave. They did not develop any Covid care facility,” Jha said. Nearly 40 teachers of the varsity have succumbed to the virus.