What to do if you or someone you live with is infected

You’ve heard the message from your local hospital, health officials up and down the ranks and even Gov. Jared Polis: If you think you might have the new coronavirus, stay home unless you’re seriously ill and need emergency care.

About 80% of people who get COVID-19 ultimately manage it at home, though some experience much more difficulty with fevers, aches and dehydration than others. Although more than 20 drugs are being tested to see if they help reduce complications of the new virus, there’s no specific treatment at this point.

So what should you do if you or somebody you share a home with starts coughing and spiking a fever?

You should act as if the new virus is causing the symptoms without waiting for a test, said Dr. Scott Miner, an emergency room physician at Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge. Testing is still lacking in Colorado, and some hospitals have limited it to people who need to be admitted, medical workers and first responders.

“The assumption is that you do have it if you have an infectious respiratory illness,” he said.

That means the sick person should stay in one bedroom, and ideally would have a separate bathroom from the rest of the household. Not everybody has a second bathroom, so people who live in closer quarters should put as much distance as they can between the sick person and everyone else, and clean anything the patient touches, said Dr. Amy Duckro, an infectious disease specialist with Kaiser Permanente.

“You do what you can under the circumstances,” she said. “Our goals are fundamentally to keep the rest of the household healthy while providing care.”

Monitoring patients with COVID-19 at home doesn’t require any special equipment, or even tracking vital signs, Miner said. If you feel like your symptoms are getting worse, or you have questions, call your doctor. If it’s becoming increasingly difficult to breathe, you can’t drink enough fluids to stay hydrated, or you start feeling confused, then it’s time to call a hospital and let them know you’re heading toward the emergency room, he said. Confusion can be a sign that the brain isn’t getting enough oxygen.

Some people have transmitted COVID-19 before developing symptoms themselves, so it’s impossible to prevent all possible exposures if someone in your home is already sick. Still, it can help to eat meals separately, wash all dishes and laundry the sick person touched in hot water, and use wipes or cleaning spray on areas that multiple people touch, such as doorknobs, phones and light switches.

Sick people also should take special care to cover their coughs and sneezes, and to promptly dispose of used tissues, Duckro said. Wearing homemade masks also might help.

There’s no specific treatment for COVID-19, so all you can do is rest, drink plenty of clear fluids and use fever-reducing medications, Duckro said. Some doctors have hypothesized that ibuprofen could worsen symptoms of the virus, though that hasn’t been proven, so people who are feeling sick might do well to substitute acetaminophen, she said. It’s important to not overdo it with drugs containing acetaminophen, though, because taking more than recommended can cause liver damage.

Children seem to develop less severe symptoms from the new virus than most adults, but parents still should take precautions to protect them if someone in the household becomes sick, said Dr. Suchitra Rao, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital Colorado. It isn’t yet clear how serious the virus is for kids with chronic health conditions, though data suggests babies are at an elevated risk compared with older kids, she said.

Kids “tend to not get very sick, but do a very good job spreading it to other people,” she said.

Everyone, including children, should learn to wash their hands thoroughly and to avoid touching their eyes, nose or mouth — though that’s not easy to enforce with young children. If you have a baby or a toddler, try to sanitize the things that are most likely to carry germs, and see whether you can make hand-washing a game, Rao said.

“It can be really difficult to keep the hands of a baby or a toddler clean, because they’re exploring their environment,” she said.

Miner said he recommends patients follow the state guidelines for getting back to their normal household activities. They should wait until at least seven days after their symptoms started, and at least three days since their temperature normalized without fever-reducing medication, he said. Beyond that, anyone who was exposed still needs to wait 14 days before going out to get groceries or do other tasks.

“We’re trying to mitigate spread as best we can,” he said.

COVID-19 may force a mind-set shift, because people need to limit their activities to protect others even if they aren’t feeling too bad, Duckro said.

“Most of us are used to pushing through when we’re not feeling well,” she said. “This is really a time to take seriously those recommendations to distance yourself from other people.”