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I don’t mean to be harping on health issues, especially given my lack of medical credentials. But as I said, I’ve experienced enough to feel that it is worth sharing information when it relates to the public good. So bear with me. Please.
A few weeks ago, my offspring called to say she was feeling ill. Her band, Seabath, had just put on a show and she felt she had contracted something with all the milling and mingling.
Her symptoms? Stuffiness, sore throat, headache and diarrhoea. Knowing her propensity to panic, I reassured her that it was probably nothing serious, and the diarrhoea might have been a result of the pre-show jitters. She wasn’t convinced.
A couple days later, she called again, and this time she sounded poorly. She was obviously congested and her voice was heavy. She felt weak and I think she had a cough.
“I think it’s Covid,” she declared.
I was a bit surprised because with dengue running up and down the place, I had forgotten that Covid might still be lurking about—as I am sure most of you have.
She’d looked up the symptoms of the newer variants—a collection of the mutations linked together by the facetious name FLiRT—and she fit.
She went to a doctor, who said it could be either Covid or a flu. Either way, she said, the treatment was basically the same. Rest, hydrate, take painkillers and isolate.
I’d thought this was a bit wishy-washy as a diagnosis. Shouldn’t she have given her a Covid test?
Anyway, the child got a test and it turned out positive. After about a week, she tested again and it was negative. Around the same time, a friend messaged to say he was feeling unwell and he didn’t think he could come over the following day. His symptoms were basically the same as hers.
He was sure it was a flu, and was relieved it wasn’t dengue. I told him about my daughter’s episode. Oh hell, he said, I hadn’t thought about that.
Then a few days later, another friend messaged to say she had Covid. She’d sent a voice message and she sounded terrible.
Rest up, I urged. “It’s all I can do,” she responded.
Then I started feeling sneezy and sniffly; my throat was sore, and my sinuses were in a mess. I attributed it to the extra exposure I’d been having to dust and allergens because I had been sorting through old files and papers (from decades ago, and when you’re doing that kind of cleaning, it takes forever because you have to read everything).
No matter how you have stored them, dust finds it way. When I told my daughter that I wasn’t feeling well, she immediately thought it was Covid.
(Copyright Vector Illustration)
Despite my insistence that it was the combination of Saharan dust and my deep cleaning, she brought me a Covid test. It was negative. So it was the flu. But it was also a reminder that the Covid virus is still circulating, even if its symptoms are milder.
Naturally, I went checking.
Earlier this week, the UN website for the World Health Organisation announced that: “Covid-19 infections are surging worldwide—including at the Olympics—and are unlikely to decline anytime soon.”
The fear is that more severe variants may soon be on the horizon.
Last month, the BBC carried an article examining the spike. It explained a number of things that might be useful to know (even if it is based on UK findings).
Although there is a small increase in cases, it is more difficult to measure.
“We no longer collect national data in way we used to, as far less testing takes place now.”
Hospitals no longer test everyone admitted, but they have seen a new group of variants descended from the dominant JN1 variant, a sub-variant of the Omicron strain—that’s what they’ve nicknamed FLiRT.
It seems the overall outlook is that virus mutations are normal; Covid is not going to disappear, and so it will become part of life (in its various incarnations); and humans will just have to learn to live with it.
Here are the general symptoms: high temperature or shivering; new, continuous cough; loss or change to your sense of smell or taste; shortness of breath; feeling tired or exhausted; aching body; headache; sore throat; blocked or runny nose; loss of appetite; diarrhoea; feeling unwell.
In the UK, as it is locally, there are no longer any legal restrictions requiring people to self-isolate, no requirement to wear masks or to have a test. (That explains the doctor’s decision not to administer a test.)
In these times when human interactions are frequent and often in close quarters, it is easy to abandon some of the precautions we had been taking. (“Is not just rice you pick up in the supermarket,” quipped a friend.)
It seems everywhere you turn, people are suffering. The dengue cases are rising; as are the bouts of influenza. Covid is flirting its way into the mix, and even if it’s not as severe as it was, it is not a trifling matter.
I know people might be reluctant to test for it, but if only to prevent its spread, it would be worth checking it out once you suspect you have it.
As I said, I’m not a medical expert, but I don’t like to see suffering.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
