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A visit to the emergency room and a second test for Covid-19 yielded another positive result. Just three days earlier, health authorities had cleared her in the Australian state of New South Wales, and she was allowed to end her home quarantine after 72 hours without symptoms.
When is this going to end? I think about it constantly, ”he said of the twists and turns in his health. “Am I still contagious? How do I know if I am not contagious? ”
Their experience is in addition to a growing number of reports of patients who appear to have reactivated symptoms, tested positive again, or even potentially re-infected. Such incidents do not align with the generally accepted understanding of how virus infections work and spread.
False sunrise
This so-called false dawn phenomenon is puzzling to health experts as they try to deal with the mysterious pathogen that emerged just five months ago. Solving the puzzle will inform a wide range of challenges, from developing an effective vaccine to how quickly governments can safely end blockages and allow normal life to resume.
More immediately, the situation is taking personal toll, making the recovery journey a complex and frustrating experience for some of the more than 1 million pandemic survivors.
So far, there hasn’t been enough research to conclude why symptoms seem to reappear in some people, and if they experience reinfection or if the virus persists for weeks. One possibility is that Covid-19 causes blood clots that can cause potentially dangerous complications unless treated with blood-thinning medications, said Edwin J.R. van Beek, president of clinical radiology at the Queens Medical Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh.
Dead virus
South Korean researchers also offered some clues this week when they reported that so-called nucleic acid tests could be positive based on the detection of dead viral particles that could give the false impression that a patient is still infectious when it is not.
Dead muddy coronavirus particles as a result of test results
“Everyone is trying to figure this out,” said Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious disease professor at the Stanford School of Medicine. “What happens when people have been sick and infected? Will we consider them immune and, therefore, not susceptible? Or are they immune and serve as potential points of infection for other people?
Officials in countries that managed to suppress an initial wave of the pandemic are fearing the possibility that the virus may have a seasonal pattern and could return in the fall and repeat the nightmare scenario.
Tense hospitals
Hospitals already beyond their limits may see increased demand if patients return. It also has long-term implications for social security networks and insurers, as some struggle with the lingering effects of the coronavirus on their daily lives and health. Severe cases requiring ventilators and ICU stays would require continuous follow-up care as they recover from the test, further putting pressure on healthcare systems.
Life after fans can be hell for coronavirus survivors
There may also be an increasing psychological cost. Governments may try to isolate survivors longer for fear they will remain infectious, adding more anxiety to patients who are already uncertain of when they will be considered healthy again.
“A lot of patients will have mental health problems,” said Michelle Biehl, a pulmonary critical care doctor at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. “They will have anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder.”
As the number of recovered patients increases, the burden will begin to drop down the chain of medical practice, Biehl said. More primary care physicians, mental health specialists, and physical therapists will care for survivors.
“You send them home and what happens then?” Maldonado asked. “From the outpatient side, we are just starting to get to that point where we are seeing people in the long term.”
Group immunity
There is a consensus that so-called collective immunity is key to ending the pandemic, but with a vaccine that is probably not widely available this year, it will depend on factors such as how long people who have recovered have immunity and what percentage of people they must be immune to protect the “pack”.
Catching Covid-19 may not protect it against new infections
“There are many unknowns and uncertainties in the development of individual immunity,” said Kentaro Iwata, professor of infectious diseases at Kobe University in Japan. “The development of antibodies within the body is not necessarily the development of immunity against this disease.”
The unknowns about infectiousness, immunity, and persistent symptoms create frustrating dilemmas for patients like Daniela Alves. The London resident paid £ 200 ($ 251) for a private test that she said was positive. Like Nicholson-McKellar, she was never hospitalized, but she had coughs, shortness of breath, and pains that came and went for weeks, never on a direct path to recovery, leaving her unsure about her health status.
“I don’t know when I’m going to be negative so I can get out,” she said. “Do I have to pay another £ 200 to know that I am safe from others?”
