Combination of hookah and Covid is catastrophic

The use of the water pipe or hookah has been the cause of death in many young Dominicans infected with Covid-19 because it produces chemical burns in the lungs that, together with the virus, cause severe complications in the patient, regardless of age.

This was stated by the intensivist César Gamalier Matos, manager of the Critical Medicine and Intensive Therapy Unit of the Plaza de la Salud General Hospital, noting that during these two years of the pandemic, he has received young people up to 18 years of age in ICU in conditions critical for Covid-19 and that when the X-ray is done, chronic severe lung damage is observed.

“From the behavior, we saw in young people aged 22, 24, 28 and even 18 with Covid-19 that we received in the hospital, I can tell you that hookah is worse than cigarettes because of the damage it causes to the lungs.”, pointed out the specialist with more than 30 years of practice specializing in critical health care.

He said that when infected young people began to arrive at the ICU-Covid of the hospital, “we were surprised by the severity of the cases and we began to see some X-rays, we saw that it appeared with severe chronic lung damage to which the virus had been added,” Gamalier Matos said in an interview with Listín Diario.