 I'm Dr. Hemant Kalyan. In this video, I'm going to talk to you about the early symptoms of COVID-19 infection. In this pandemic which is galloping in Bangalore, you or I or any one of our community may unfortunately contract the COVID-19 infection in spite of our best precautions. In the early stages, the COVID-19 infection is indistinguishable from the common flu. So the early symptoms would be fever, possibly sore throat, redness of the eye, loss of smell, loss of taste, loss of appetite, a general feeling of weakness and lethargy, possibly diarrhea. And these are the symptoms which could be similar to a normal flu. It's not necessary that every common flu is COVID-19, but in the current environment it would be a good idea to assume that this could be COVID-19 and therefore you isolate yourself at home that is a self-imposed home quarantine at this stage would be a useful thing to do. The other thing that's important is to get in touch with the fever clinic within 2 to 3 days of the symptoms if they're not getting better with simple measures at home like paracetamol, saltwater goggles for your sore throat and some steam inhalation to clear your nose and lungs. So if these things are not getting better then it's a good idea to contact the fever clinic. Usually the fever clinic may advise a COVID test only if your symptoms are persisting for more than 3 days but it's a good idea to get in touch with them early to prevent unwanted progression of the disease. At this point I would recommend two simple gadgets at home which all of us windmillers should have. One is a simple digital thermometer which is a handy tool for us to self-monitor our temperature if in case we have these symptoms every 4 to 6 hours and the second thing is a pulse oximeter. We will in fact produce another video about how to use a pulse oximeter but essentially it's a simple low-cost tool which you can use to measure the oxygen saturation of your blood that is to say how efficiently your blood is transmitting oxygen to the tips of your fingers and the tips of your toes. Normally the oxygen saturation should be between 95 to 98% for a healthy person on room air. If your oxygen saturation goes below 94% on room air when you're at rest this could be a red flag for COVID and I would recommend that we all get used to using a pulse oximeter when we are healthy so that we don't have to learn a new thing in a panic situation.