Covid-19 in the community

Well we called the doctors up, but at that point it was just very ‘okay well if you’ve got Covid symptoms don’t come in, we’re not going to see you. No chance.’ Isolate, plenty of fluids, keep yourself warm, the typical things that like, well most of them, most people would say. So as much as yeah I called and said ‘oh can I you know, can I do anything?’ It was just a case of okay, get yourself tested, if you’re positive, lock you know lock yourself up essentially. Self-isolate and yeah that’s it, so it wasn’t really going to see the doctors per say it was more advice on what to do.

My name is Sharon Dixon and I’m a GP. 
 
This is a pulse oximeter which is a little device that sits on your finger, sometimes you put them on toes, but it’s usually fingers.
 
And they shine a light through your finger and it helps tell what your heart rate is and what the level of oxygen in your blood is.
 
These were used quite often during Covid so if you went to any clinics for example or you saw a health professional for an assessment when you had Covid or Covid symptoms you may well have met one of these.
 
You might have had it checked when you were sort of sitting quietly or while you were breathing. Sometimes we use them on people who have walked around for a little bit to see if the oxygen levels were holding steady or staying the same when we did that.
 
These are more reliable than a smart phone reading which sort of bounces light off the skin.
 
Readings can be changed a little bit by things like nail polish, henna or sometimes if you’ve got poor circulation or very cold hands.
 
One of the things that can be helpful if you did have one at home is to know what your normal levels are and then to monitor for any changes or changes in your patterns or trend, including when you walk around, and that could have been one of the things that was quite helpful to monitor.
 
One of the other ways they were used in Covid in England was there was a scheme where you might be given one by a health professional who would have given it to you with a plan and a symptom diary and some follow up calls, and its just part of the tools to assess how people were feeling. It helped us look for oxygen levels that were very low that we might not have otherwise known about.
 
But it is really important to remember that it is only one part of the picture and at any point if anybody oxygen levels didn’t seem right or their symptoms didn’t seem right or they were worried about any aspect of how they were or how those might be related to each other it would be absolutely important not to rely on any one thing but to immediately discuss that with a health professional.

I was able to get an oximeter to check my sat levels. I was able to borrow that. My son went and collected it for me. But that fell a little way into my condition. So, having things like that where you could self-test based on what you were advised and through that app that I was told that I could get the optometer or whatever it was and the simple things that were available via apps that were not, didn’t work as much, but physically having the optometer which you put on your finger and you with practice you’ve got the reading. It was a self-help thing that, that they were real practical and not things that were via the phone as reading.

I’ve got Covid, I am struggling slightly to breathe. You know, can I get an oxygen monitor. At least I’ll know if I have to go into hospital, and they said “Well, we can do better than that. We would recommend that you borrow an oxygen machine. You need a prescription from your doctor.” I called my doctor, I explained it and they said that’s a great idea. Gave me a prescription, no problem. Yes, it’s a private prescription, yeah, I think it was a private prescription.

Luckily my wife’s pretty sensible to and she, you know, between us, we just sat down and looked on our laptops and looked up NHS, basically Google, I’ve got Covid, what do I do sort of thing. And the instructions were relatively straightforward. We did find it was much easier to speak on the phone. There were a number of competing potentially contradictory bits of messaging on the NHS apps and different sites and as if it still wasn’t quite clear what you should do in any circumstance even 18 months on or whatever it is. So, we did find that getting on the phone was, was the best thing to do. Some, somehow it’s the ability to ask questions, I think that helps because you know, you can refine things more precisely towards your own condition, rather than, you know, at the generic level of what do you do with person Covid? Well what do you do with person Covid whose got these three symptoms and had them for such and such days, number of days. Has been double vaccinated and lives near a PCR centre, gets you a much more direct sort of result than just looking at something which is addressed at the sort of social society level. We found the phone just much, much easier. Very straightforward.