Psychological support vital to coronavirus patients: expert

Patients with coronavirus-related pneumonia need psychological support during treatment, said Zhang Wenhong, director of the infectious disease department at Huashan Hospital.

Zhang, who is head of an expert group on the treatment of patients with coronavirus-related pneumonia in Shanghai, said on Wednesday that a psychiatrist has started working with pneumonia patients at Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center in Jinshan District.

“Some patients have already started to have psychological problems, which was observed also during the SARS epidemic in 2003.” he said. “Sometimes people die of fear and not disease.”

Zhang said seven psychiatrists from Shanghai have joined other doctors of the city to help patients in Wuhan, the city under quarantine after the outbreak of the epidemic; but there, panic touches a wider public.

“About 80 to 90 percent of people who sought out doctors didn’t have to go to the hospital at all, but they went out of panic,” he said. “People who have a slight fever of 37.3 or 37.4 degrees Celcius and no obvious symptoms are advised to stay at home and observe the development of their symptoms.”

The impact of the epidemic shouldn’t be underestimated, nor should it be over-hyped, Zhang said.