COVID

The Basics of COVID

The corona virus responsible for covid-19 can cause a range of symptoms and severity of symptoms. These can include:

Cough, wheezing, and shortness of breath
Fever, chills, and night sweats
Runny nose, nasal congestion, and sore throat
Body aches and headaches
Some of the less common symptoms include: Loss of taste and smell

As mentioned, the symptom severity can have a wide range. Although anyone can have severe symptoms, risk factors that increase the likelihood of severe disease include:

Age over 60
Chronic lung diseases (COPD being the most common)
Heart disease (History of heart attack or a weak heart)
History of stroke
Chronic kidney disease or cirrhosis
Diabetes
Being on medicine that reduces your immune system
Actively treated cancer

Are There Ways to Reduce the Risk of Severe COVID?

YES! Receiving all CDC recommended vaccines can not only reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19 but can also reduce the risk of needing to be admitted to the hospital for severe respiratory COVID. Regardless if you have received the vaccine or not, there are also two medicines one of the clinicians at Pinnacle Urgent Care can prescribe to reduce the risk of severe disease in those patients considered to be high-risk (see above list). These medications are:

Paxlovid: Before the implementation of Paxlovid for COVID-19, a study revealed that among high-risk patients, there was an 89% reduction in hospitalizations for those who took Paxlovid compared to the high-risk group who did not receive the medication.
Molnupiravir: Molnupiravir, in the same study, was also shown to have a statistically significant decrease in the percent of patients who required hospital admission.

I've Tested Positive for COVID-19. Now What?

If you have taken a home test which was positive and are not in a high-risk group, you should quarantine and take the appropriate over-the-counter medications. Some of the medications we recommend include:

Fever, headache, or body aches: Tylenol 1000 mg every 6 hours
Cough: Mucinex DM and raw honey

If you consider yourself to be high-risk, please come in to let one of our clinicians evaluate you and develop a treatment plan specific to your unique symptoms and health history.

What are the Current COVID-19 Quarantine Recommendations per the CDC?

The CDC recommends a minimum of a 5-day quarantine after the first symptom. The following three criteria must all be met in order to end quarantine:

5 days since first symptom
Symptoms are improving
There has been no temperature 100.3 or higher for the final 24 hours without the use of fever reducers

Should you continue to run a fever on day five or show no improvement in symptoms by day five, then quarantine becomes day-to-day. Continue to add 24 hours to the quarantine until all three criteria are met.

What are the Signs I May Have Severe COVID?

As COVID is a respiratory viru,s the main symptom to be aware of is significant shortness of breath. If you feel you are having significant shortness of breath with COVID, please go to the ER or stop by Pinnacle Urgent Care to see if you can continue to treat at home or need to go to the ER. The numbers we look for are the number of breaths per minute (22-28/ minute is high) and and oxygen saturation. For an oxygen saturation reading under 92%, you will need to go to the ER.