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Why do 'mild' Covid-19 cases sometimes linger for months? (advisory.com)
2 points by ag56 on July 28, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments


My household got presumed coronavirus in March. I say presumed as no test available.

First the nanny, then my wife, then me. I’m male, late thirties, workout daily (or used to anyway). I got it worst and spent weeks 2 and 3 in bed struggling to breathe. But we mostly recovered.

Two months later in May, the symptoms came back, but milder. Again, my wife first, then me the next week. I only spent 3 days in bed. Again no test (we’re in the UK).

Well two more months have passed, and guess what happened last week? Again my wife first, now my turn. I write this from bed waiting for a doctor callback. Maybe I’ll get a test this time, but I expect it would be negative.

There is a lot of focus on the binary nature of living or dying from coronavirus. I hear many in the tech community wish they could just get it and be done with it. But there is a very large grey area between full recovery and dying. Even if you are young and healthy, you don’t want this.


Do you have a pulse oximeter? It might be a good idea to order one and monitor your blood oxygen saturation. You might be suffering from anxiety, which will show with the oximeter.


The other option is it's new cases each time, and your wife just really needs to start wearing a mask, and better had washing.


It is highly unlikely as the reports of "reinfections" only are by PCR-positive test (not stating the quantity of viral RNA found, either). But it could be as well that the immune system found and cleared the virus.

One would need to see if there's infectious virus in the throat before calling a "reinfection".

P.S. for the GP: you might have got repeated infections of different viruses which causes similar symptoms, because something like that was found for "reinfected" cases in South Korea. Asking for a proper test and a serological test (so you know if one of the past events was indeed due to a SARS-CoV-2 infection) as well would help.




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