New pre­lim­i­nary med­ical re­search has shown that COVID-19 may trig­ger erec­tile dys­func­tion.

And al­though the re­search done by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi is still in­con­clu­sive, promi­nent uro­log­i­cal sur­geon Dr Lall Sawh says it should be enough to ter­ri­fy men in­to tak­ing bet­ter pre­cau­tions against COVID-19.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dr Sawh said COVID-19 could af­fect sex­u­al per­for­mance and trig­ger im­po­tence if the blood ves­sels in the pe­nis are dam­aged. He said the virus in­creas­es fa­tigue and al­so im­pacts men­tal health.

"There are blood ves­sels in the pe­nis that are ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial in the erec­tile process as well as spongy tis­sues so if the virus does, in fact, dam­age the blood ves­sels or the soft tis­sue, def­i­nite­ly there will be a prob­lem with erec­tile dys­func­tion in men so af­flict­ed," Dr Sawh said.

He said the cor­re­la­tion be­tween COVID and im­po­tence was based on a pre­ma­ture re­search pa­per pub­lished by re­searchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi.

"This came about sim­ply as they were do­ing im­plants in men who had no erec­tion/they call these im­plants—pros­the­sis. Cu­ri­ous­ly, they looked at two pa­tients who were hav­ing pe­nile im­plants and who were known to have COVID in­fec­tions and they took a piece of erec­tile tis­sue and thor­ough­ly analysed it to see whether the COVID in­fec­tion of these pa­tients had cre­at­ed any phys­i­cal or mi­cro­scop­ic de­fect on the erec­tile tis­sue. And they found that there were en­dothe­lial changes, that is changes in the lin­ing of the erec­tile tis­sue. They then sur­mised that the COVID in­fec­tion caused erec­tile dys­func­tion," he said.

Dr Sawh, who is an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the So­ci­ety of Sur­geons said peo­ple in T&T must re­alise how im­por­tant it was to pre­vent COVID and take vac­ci­na­tions.

"Right now per capi­ta, we have the high­est death rate and high­est in­ci­dence rate. That should tell us a sto­ry and warn us and fright­en us," he said.

How­ev­er, he lament­ed that too many peo­ple were tak­ing the virus as a big joke.

"For many peo­ple, the pe­nis is a big joke. But this is no jok­ing mat­ter. This is a warn­ing and, there­fore, the men should take it se­ri­ous­ly. We are in a cri­sis, a se­ri­ous health cri­sis, we need to take our health in­to our hands and try to min­imise the spread of this virus.

He added, "Even though the re­search is based on­ly on two cas­es, it's the be­gin­ning of what will be more re­search. There is go­ing to be more re­search and num­bers and if you're get­ting an ear­ly warn­ing, a wise man taketh an ear­ly warn­ing. Be care­ful and don't wait for the sci­ence to come and say aye, COVID will af­fect your erec­tile per­for­mance. That will be too late. This is an ear­ly sig­nal and a red flag is be­ing raised. Take it and run with it. Pre­vent your­self from get­ting COVID."

He urged the pub­lic to take all the pre­cau­tions that the Min­istry of Health has been pro­mot­ing.