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Recovery can be a slow process, depending on the severity of the condition.
Based on the little information available so far about the new coronavirus, there are signs that, for infected people with more severe symptoms, the recovery process for covid-19 appears to be lengthy.
And the more invasive (and long-lasting) the treatment received, the longer it will take.
The BBC then raises questions, based on the scientific data available so far.
What if I only have mild symptoms?
Most people who develop covid-19 have only mild symptoms of a cough or fever. But they can also experience body pain, fatigue, sore throat, and headache.
The cough is initially dry, but some people also end up coughing up mucus, which contains lung cells destroyed by the virus.
These symptoms are treated with rest, lots of fluids, and pain relievers like acetaminophen.
For these people, the recovery time seems to be fast: the fever usually disappears in less than a week, although the cough lasts longer.
An analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO) of Chinese patient data shows that, in these cases, recovery occurs, on average, in two weeks.
What if I have more severe symptoms?
For some, the disease can become much more serious. This tends to happen seven to ten days after infection.
The transformation can be sudden. Breathing becomes more difficult and the lungs become inflamed. This is because even though the body’s immune system is fighting the infection, it overreacts in its reaction, causing the entire body to experience side effects.
This means that some patients need to be hospitalized to receive oxygen.
“Difficulty breathing can take considerable time to improve,” British doctor Sarah Jarvis told the BBC. “The body will try to recover from excessive damage and inflammation.”
According to Jarvis, in these cases, the recovery time generally varies between two and eight weeks, and the feeling of tiredness persists.
What if I need to be admitted to an ICU?
The WHO study estimates that one in 20 people will need intensive care, which may include sedation and the use of mechanical respirators.
Any stay in the ICU, regardless of the disease, requires time for the patient to recover. They are then taken to the regular hospital ward before returning home.
Dr Alison Pittard, dean of the UK School of Critical Care Medicine, says that it can take 12 to 18 months to return to normal life, after any period in an ICU.
For those who spend a lot of time in a hospital bed, muscle loss occurs. Patients will experience weakness and the muscles will need time to strengthen again. For some, it will be necessary to undergo physical therapy to walk again.
Due to the stress suffered by the body in an ICU, there is also the possibility that the patient may suffer delusions or psychological problems.
“There seems to be an additional element to this disease: viral fatigue is definitely a huge factor” in stress in the body, says Paul Twose, a physiotherapist at the ICU in Wales.
There are reports of patients in countries like China and Italy complaining of weakness throughout the body, shortness of breath after simple activities, persistent cough, and irregular breathing. And they need many hours of sleep to feel good.
“We know of patients who have taken a long time, potentially months, to recover.”
But it is difficult to generalize. Some people spend relatively short periods in critical care, while others need to spend weeks in the hospital using mechanical respirators.
Can coronavirus affect my long-term health?
We don’t know for sure, since we don’t have extensive historical data, but we can learn lessons from other similar diseases.
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) develops in patients whose immune system is overloaded, causing damage to the lungs.
“There is data indicating that even five years later, some people may continue to experience physical and psychological difficulties,” says Twose.
Dr James Gill, general practitioner and professor at the Warwick Medical School in the UK, says that in some cases support is needed to restore a patient’s mental health.
“When you’re having trouble breathing, the doctor says, ‘We need to put you on a respirator. You’ll have to sleep. Do you want to say goodbye to your family?’, There are significant psychological scars.”
It’s worth noting that even in milder cases of covid-19 patients, long-term problems, such as fatigue, may remain.
How many people have already recovered?
For now, it is difficult to get exact figures. As of April 26, Johns Hopkins University in the United States, which collects data on the pandemic, estimated that 860,000 people had already recovered, of whom 2.9 million identified with the disease.
But these numbers have discrepancies, because governments use different methods to make their medical records. Some do not even publish data on the recovered people, and there are many minor reports: many people with mild symptoms will not even be examined and taken into account by their governments.
Mathematical models estimate that 99% to 99.5% of patients recover.
In Brazil, data compiled by the Ministry of Health until April 25 estimated that 50% of recovered patients (those discharged from the hospital or those who were examined, but overcame the symptoms without requiring hospitalization) among the 58,500 cases , according to official data, which also contain underreporting.
Can I get sick from covid-19 more than once?
This is still the subject of much speculation, but there is still little concrete evidence on the duration of immunity to covid-19. Patients who have successfully overcome the virus are believed to have probably created immunity against it, although there is insufficient data on it.
There are reports of infected patients more than once, but this is believed to be due to incorrect tests.
The issue of immunity is one of the most important at the moment, to understand when social isolation measures can be relaxed and how efficient future vaccines against the new coronavirus will be.
