Union Minister Jitendra Singh, also a renowned endocrinologist, on Thursday said diabetics need to take extra precautions against coronavirus as they are relatively more vulnerable to infections and consequent complications due to their immunocompromised status.
A teacher of medicine for over 30 years, he said infections lead to an even more vulnerable situation when a patient is suffering from diabetic complications in the kidneys or diabetic nephropathy or a consequent chronic kidney disease.
The Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office said like most other viruses, coronavirus has a self-limiting history of disease, with the only peculiarity that it is comparatively more virulent than most other droplet virus infections.
Like in case of many other viral infections, a healthy individual with a good immunity status may be cured of COVID-19 without any complications with adequate rest and other measures, Singh said.
However, complications including morbidity and mortality tend to occur in patients suffering from diabetes, chronic kidney disease, other compromising diseases like cancer etc, and those on extremes of age, like very young children and very elderly citizens, he said.
Singh said the medical fraternity was also taken aback to an extent by the emergence of the coronavirus because over the last 30 years the focus was primarily on the management of non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart ailments, dyslipidemia and metabolic disorders, etc.
There was a certain amount of relief that by and large science has conquered infectious and communicable diseases which were rampant before the advent of antibiotic and antimicrobial drugs, he said.
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The medical measures of hygiene, cleanliness and resistance building, he added, are to a large extent the same as were being practised in the bygone years for the treatment of diseases like tuberculosis, plague, cholera, etc.
The number of coronavirus cases in India climbed to 694 on Thursday as nearly 90 fresh cases were reported, while the death toll rose to 16, according to the Union Health Ministry.