Follow-Up of practiced treatment regimens & health conditions of recovered patients of COVID-19 residing in Dhaka city: A survey-based descriptive cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background and aim: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has spread worldwide like wildfire since late December 2019. Caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus2 (SARS-CoV-2), this pandemic has induced a sense of panic and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths globally in short span of time. Bangladesh is not an exception regarding COVID-19; there have been several thousand COVID-19 cases and several hundreds of deaths reported so far. This survey-based descriptive cross-sectional study aims to study the prognosis of this viral infection, mainly focusing on the experienced symptoms, treatment regimens and post-recovery health conditions of the patients affected with COVID-19 residing in Dhaka city. Materials and methods: All the respondents of this study were diagnosed at IEDCR from October to December 2020, and they resided in Dhaka city corporation area. The data were collected via an online survey using Google forms and were analyzed using SPSS version 26.00. The privacy of the respondents and confidentiality of the data were strictly maintained as per protocol. Results: Among the 522 respondents mean age was 39.76±13.02 years. The respondents consisted of 70.31% males and 29.50% females. The mean BMI of the respondents was 26.4±6.52 kg/m2 . Among the respondents 39.3% were found to have various underlying health conditions. About 88.5% of the respondents suffered from a diverse range of symptoms including fever, fatigue, reduced sense of smell and taste, body pain, headache, dry cough etc. The respondents were on various medications that fell under the national guideline for COVID19 management of Bangladesh. A mean of 19.71±7.56 days was required by the respondents to obtain a negative RT-PCR result. Various symptoms like fatigue, anxiety and/or depression, uneasiness, body pain, headache, dry cough etc. persisted in 76.3% of the respondents even after their recovery. Conclusion: Males were more likely to be get affected by COVID-19 than females. Common symptoms of COVID-19 included fever, fatigue, headache, dry cough; less common symptoms like a reduced sense of smell and taste were also prevalent. Most respondents tend to take a longer time to get symptom-free than obtain a negative result. Further studies are required to provide more COVID-19 related information of Bangladesh.