Coronavirus: new update on health problems after surviving

As time passes since the start of this virus, there are more and more studies coming out about potential longer term health problems for those who survive the virus.

Reuters (Jun 26) reported on two studies:

While coronavirus symptoms typically resolve in two or three weeks, an estimated 1 in 10 experience prolonged symptoms, Dr. Helen Salisbury of the University of Oxford wrote in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.

. . . “If you previously ran 5k three times a week and now feel breathless after a single flight of stairs, or if you cough incessantly and are too exhausted to return to work, then the fear that you may never regain your previous health is very real,” she wrote.

Dr. Igor Koralnik, chief of neuro-infectious diseases at Northwestern Medicine, reviewed current scientific literature and found about half of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had neurological complications, such as dizziness, decreased alertness, difficulty concentrating, disorders of smell and taste, seizures, strokes, weakness and muscle pain.



Times of Israel (Jun 28) reported:

“What we are seeing is very frightening,” Prof. Gabriel Izbicki of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center told The Times of Israel. “More than half the patients, weeks after testing negative, are still symptomatic.”

. . . .“There is no correlation between seriousness of disease during hospitalization and extent of symptoms afterwards,” he said, discussing preliminary results from his study on recovered patients who were treated in hospitals and coronavirus hotels.

. . . Elderly patients who were badly stricken by the coronavirus, even if they had no previous respiratory issues, can find their lungs working at half capacity, long after testing negative, said [Eran Schenker, director of the month-old clinic in Bnei Brak run by Maccabi Healthcare Services].

. . . Izbicki said that in his experience, COVID-related lung damage can affect patients of all ages, and said he shares the concern that people will not regain full lung performance. “We don’t know if the lung function tests will become normal,” he said.

These studies are from the UK to the US to Israel and the percentage of those having health problems range from 10% to 50%.

I think the one quote to take away is from Prof. Izbicki: lung damage can affect patients of all ages. Wikipedia lists the COVID-19 CFR % for those between 20 - 44 to be at 0.2% at the upper range. So yes, it is still deadlier than the flu, which has a CFR of 0.1%. Yet, I think the one thing that needs to be emphasized more is that even though you have a very small chance of dying if you're under the age of 44, you might have a much greater chance of suffering from significant lung damage and other ailments that will put a heavy dent into how you live your life. Are these temporary issues that last a few months or last a life time? It is still too early to tell, but what if they do last a life time? If they do, I suspect that life will be cut short by a significant period of time and early death will be due to COVID-19. For some reason, I feel that this messaging needs to be sent out as more data is uncovered, because it might start changing the behavior of those in the younger age brackets.