You May Actually Never Recover From COVID-19
Don’t take the coronavirus too lightly, too soon. It may not kill you, but may scar you for life.
The Coronavirus pandemic does not seem to end. Cities have started re-opening, the working class has begun going to work and schools are starting to open with in-person classes. While this may seem as a relief for some people that they will be able to return to their “normal” lives, most are unaware of the danger they are putting themselves in. While many countries including the US, Russia, China and India are reaching closer to have found a vaccine, still there exists no trustworthy method to treat the COVID infection.
While countries start to re-open, the cases don’t seem to stop climbing the hill. Countries like the US where the curve had started flatlining, re-opening has only made the situation worse with experts saying that a second wave may hit the country. To the numerous people I have spoken to, and the social media discussion I have witnessed, most people who are happy about returning to their normal life are under the impression that the COVID infection is generally mild and they can easily recover from it like a flu. It’s true that most people recover from this infection, with 7.45 million out of 13.4 million cases having successfully recovered — which is a happy ratio of 56%. However, most are blind to the long term effects the infection may have on your body, which immediately may not affect the individual’s health.
Research about the long-term effects
Doctors are worrying what long term effects the COVID infection may have on the patient’s body. It was seen that in severe cases, the infection caused damage much beyond the lungs, which wasn’t fully reversible. Since this deadly virus is just months old, there has been limited preliminary research on the long term effects of the coronavirus infection — but the implications of these studies are proving to be horrific.
Long-term lung scarring
Many victims of the novel coronavirus who recovered after a severe infection, experienced burning sensation in their chest and dry cough even weeks after being declared as “recovered”. One study published in the Radiology found that the CT scans of more than 90% of the patients showed some kind of lung damage. It showed ground-glass like greyish appearance on the lungs which are signs of early damage and have the potential to develop into permanent scars.
Another study from John Hopkins shows that unlike SARS, the COVID infection seems to attack both the lungs instead of one. This drastically escalates the possibility of lung scarring. Panagis Galiatsatos from John Hopkins Medicine goes on to say that
“Once the pandemic is over, there will be a group of patients with new health needs: the survivors. Doctors, respiratory therapists and other health care providers will need to help these patients recover their lung function as much as possible”.
Heart damage
An early study published in the Elsevier journal in January, 2020 showed that out of 41 patients, 5 patients (12%) suffered from acute cardiac injury. Later in March 2020, a research study in Wuhan conducted on 416 patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection, found that 19.7% of patients suffered cardiac damage during hospitalization which increased the in-hospital mortality rate. The message from these respectable studies is clear — the COVID infection has the potential to cause cardiac damage which most doctors and researchers fear may not be fully reversible.
COVID 19 infection has also been thought to cause myocarditis, where inflammation in the heart makes it difficult for it to circulate oxygen to the body. This can cause easy fatigue, random pains in body parts and you may not be able to run on your treadmill like before.
Blood clotting
A large number of infected patients experienced an increased amount of clots in their body which is caused by the body’s inflammatory response to the virus. A small study showed that about 5% of the patients experienced strokes due to these clots. Though the long-term effect of this is not yet perfectly known, a preliminary research at Cornell found that even after recovering, patients experienced abnormal blood clotting. This led to fatigue, discomfort during physical activity, shortness of breath. A famous Broadway television actor, Nick Cordero had to get his right leg amputated due to blood clots caused by the COVID infection.
Infertility in men
A recent study by the US National Institute of Health showed that the COVID-19 infection could also potentially damage the testis in male. Multiple studies found high levels of ACE2 (a receptor enzyme) in the testicular cells. These receptor enzymes are believed to bind to the COVID virus and facilitate its entry in to the cell causing pathogenesis. Though, the virus may not cause direct damage, testicular damage may happen due to inflammatory and immunological response. Such damage to the testicles may slowly bring in infertility in healthy men.
The coronavirus pandemic has not only destroyed lives of people by causing widespread death, but has also brought in financial and emotional stress in families worldwide. Such a stress is urging people to get back to work, socialize and risk themselves to the COVID infection. Countries are opening up, but without adequate measures and guidelines to keep people safe and contain the infection. However, most are failing to understand, that though the coronavirus is not as deadly as the Ebola virus, the long term effects may be alarmingly dangerous and currently unknown to most of us. So if you think that the virus is not deadly, think again — it may just scar you for life.
It is fine to be scared and take precautions, rather than being brave and suffering from a dreading virus infection.
Hope this article was informative and opened your eyes about a potential risk this novel coronavirus may have on us. All the points were based off research studies conducted by accredited and reputed research institutes in the US and China. Please let me know your thoughts and STAY SAFE.
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