Srinagar, Apr 16: As the second wave of Covid-19 is witnessing a steep surge in Jammu and Kashmir, experts believe that people need to remain more vigilant giving the change in the pattern of symptoms to detect the virus.

Former Director SKIMS and renowned Gastrologist Dr Mohammad Sultan Khuroo said apart from the spike in the cases, the change in the pattern of symptoms is also, a new challenge to tackle.

“In the first wave, the common symptoms were cough, cold, fever and sore throat, red tongue and other mild symptoms related to respiratory infections but nowadays the common symptoms are abdominal pain, diarrhoea, weakness, eyeball pain and even vomiting,” Khuroo said.

Khuroo said the gastrointestinal symptoms are becoming a common problem in several Covid-19 cases.

“In many such cases, your nozzle and RTPCR test can show you negative for Covid-19 but you can still have the virus,” he said.

On how to detect the virus with new symptoms, Khuroo said that if a patient has lung disease and his CT scan shows typical appearance which are not seen in other diseases, “it means a patient has contracted covid-19 infection.”

“As younger people are nowadays being tested positive for Covid-19, most often the virus is unable to penetrate the lungs, so it affects other parts of the body which then shows symptoms like tiredness, lethargy, body ache and fatigue,” he said.

Senior doctors at SMHS and CD hospital said that in around 20 per cent cases, there is cold and fever which makes it difficult to diagnose the virus, while new symptoms like diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain are common nowadays.

Dr Khursheed Ahmad a pulmonologist a CD hospital said that the frequency of cases have increased and gastrointestinal symptoms are common nowadays.

He said that symptoms like fever, cough, cold and respiratory infections are most common but cases of gastrointestinal symptoms, vomiting, eye-ball pain and other symptoms are also coming to the fore. kno