22,698 people recovered in Ireland so far. But how many of them are 100% ok after?

Resident still feeling ill-effects of 'brutal' Covid-19 fight six weeks after all-clear

Doctors at Yale in the United States have estimated that 20 to 50 per cent of people who have had the virus are left with lasting health effects.

A Dubai resident said she is still suffering the ill-effects of her "brutal" battle with Covid-19, six weeks after being given the all-clear.
Eman Jamal, 35, said she does not know how she contracted the virus back in late April, which left her with pounding headaches and a cough which "ripped her insides apart".


She said her family took every precaution possible to avoid infection, including immediately changing their clothes after they came home from the supermarket and cleaning everything at a sanitisation station set up at the entrance to their house.

But despite all this, she and all five other members of the household still fell sick with Covid-19.

Ms Jamal, her mother and their nanny all developed mild pneumonia.
“I was having extreme difficulty breathing, severe chest pain, bad headaches, a cough that ripped my insides apart and pounding body pains,” said Ms Jamal, who is Palestinian American.


“This virus is brutal. It made me feel like nothing I ever felt before. I would feel great for a few hours or even days and then out of the blue the symptoms will appear again, what a horrible feeling.”


Ms Jamal spent 18 days at Mediclinic Parkview Hospital in Al Barsha before being discharged on May 17 following two negative tests for the virus.
Her husband became ill first with a bad headache, high fever and chills. Ms Jamal said he was barely able to move and lost his sense of taste and smell.

He went on to become seriously ill, developing double pneumonia, and required oxygen to help him breathe. He did not have any pre-existing conditions that put him at higher risk of complications.

The couple’s two children were also infected despite displaying no symptoms.

Six weeks on, while the rest of the household have fully recovered, Ms Jamal is still suffering.


She has difficulty breathing, tightness in her chest, unexplained headaches and tingling in her body at times.

Ms Jamal is one of a growing number of post-Covid-19 patients to experience lingering symptoms.

Doctors at Yale in the United States have estimated that 20 to 50 per cent of people who have had the virus are left with lasting health effects.
She did not know anyone else who had the virus aside from her family, who did not suffer from the same effects.


And she got to the point she felt so lonely she sought out Facebook groups to reach other people like herself who are still feeling ill, long after they have officially recovered.


“There are thousands of members from all over the world. So that made me feel more like I am not crazy,” she said.

There is now a growing acknowledgement in the medical community that a significant number of Covid-19 sufferers have persistent symptoms.
“A few weeks ago they used to say we can’t find out what is medically wrong with you. And now they tell me we know what you are going through is very real,” said Ms Jamal.


“We just don’t know what the cause is and we are trying to figure it out. On Thursday I am going to Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. I will be seeing an immunologist and a cardiologist.”

Dr Srinivasa Rao, a specialist in internal medicine at NMC Specialty Hospital, Al Nahda, Dubai, did not treat Ms Jamal, but said most recovered Covid-19 patients he sees struggle with lasting symptoms.


“Most of the patients who are admitted to hospital and recover do have long term effects. Most commonly the patients have loss of smell,” he said.
“Once the virus infects the epithelial cells, which starts in the nostrils, the nerve endings get damaged. And once the nerve endings are damaged, they cannot smell anything.


“People take sometimes six weeks or eight weeks to recover.”

Away With The Fairies wrote: »

20 - 50% with lasting health effects

Why aren't people taking things seriously? Packed streets with drinkers. Come autumn, pubs will be packed instead of the streets.

Form filling at the airport but you're actually free to do whatever you want.

Our government letting the Americans and British in.

No mandatory masks.

Coronavirus: why are some people experiencing long-term fatigue?

People who have been seriously unwell and treated on intensive care units can expect to take some months to recover fully, regardless of their ailment. However, with COVID-19, evidence is mounting that some people who have had relatively mild symptoms at home may also have a prolonged illness.

Overwhelming fatigue, palpitations, muscle aches, pins and needles and many more symptoms are being reported as after-effects of the virus. Around 10% of the 3.9 million people contributing to the COVID Symptom Study app have effects lasting more than four weeks.

Chronic fatigue – classified as fatigue lasting more than six weeks – is recognised in many different clinical settings, from cancer treatment to inflammatory arthritis. It can be disabling. If 1% of the 290,000 or so people who have had COVID-19 in the UK remain under the weather at three months, this will mean thousands of people are unable to return to work. They will probably have complex needs that the NHS is ill-prepared to address at present.

COVID-19 is not the only cause of chronic fatigue. Prolonged fatigue is well recognised after other viral infections such as the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes infectious mononucleosis (also known as glandular fever). Post-viral fatigue was also seen in a quarter of those infected with the original Sars virus in Hong Kong in 2003.

When it comes to treating chronic fatigue, the emphasis previously has been on effective treatment of the underlying disease, in the belief that this would diminish the fatigue. However, for most viral infections there is no specific treatment, and because COVID-19 is so new, we don’t yet know how to manage post-COVID fatigue.

What might be causing post-COVID fatigue?

Although we know that lasting fatigue can sometimes follow other viral infections, detailed mechanistic insight is, for the most part, lacking. An ongoing viral infection in lung, brain, fat or other tissue may be one mechanism. A prolonged and inappropriate immune response after the infection has been cleared might be another.

However, a previous study has given us some insight. When a chemical called interferon-alpha was given to people as a treatment for hepatitis C, it generated a flu-like illness in many patients and post-viral fatigue in a few. Researchers have studied this “artificial infection response” as a model of chronic fatigue. They found that baseline levels of two molecules in the body that promote inflammation – interleukin-6 and interleukin-10 – predicted people’s subsequent development of chronic fatigue.

Of particular interest, these same pro-inflammatory molecules are seen in the “cytokine storm” of severely ill COVID-19 patients. This suggests there might be a pattern of immune system activation during the viral infection that is relevant to ongoing symptoms.

Further support for interleukin-6 playing some sort of role comes from the successful use of tocilizumab – a treatment that lessens the impact of interleukin-6 and reduces inflammation – to treat severe COVID-19.

TheValeyard wrote: »

I fortunately only know a couple of people who contracted it, but for one of them he's had heart trouble afterwards, never had an issue before it

paw patrol wrote: »

My kid was 7 when he had flu , real flu - influenza type A.

The media are acting the maggot in this because we all know that after a serious dose of anything even though you recovered the body takes time to heal

nannerbenahs wrote: »

Less hand wringing ...time for science and statistics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvF...ature=emb_logo

s1ippy wrote: »

Virgin Media had a segment about this today

https://twitter.com/newschambers/status/1303376313126989824?s=20

A Dublin teenager has told of his harrowing battle with Covid-19 and is urging other young people to take the disease seriously.


Jack Edge, 17, from Rathfarnham, had no underlying health conditions when he contracted the virus in April.


Five months on and three hospital admissions later, the Leaving Cert student is still suffering from the "destruction" the virus wreaked on his body.


Jack first displayed symptoms of Covid-19 on 15 April and five days later was admitted to Tallaght University Hospital. Within hours of being hospitalised, he was fighting for his life.