Coronavirus: how quickly do COVID-19 symptoms develop and how long do they last?

 

By now, hopefully everyone knows about the key symptoms of coronavirus - fever about 37.8°C, new, continuous cough and loss of (or new change to) your sense of smell and/or taste. But there's still much confusion about how quickly symptoms develop after exposure to the virus and what you can expect if you do become infected.

Let's start with a disclaimer - it may feel as if COVID-19 has been around for ever, but this is still a relatively new disease and evidence is changing at speed. And as countries around the world see more cases and manage the pandemic in their own ways, lessons are being learnt.

In the first weeks after a country is affected or a new wave of cases occurs, there is usually adequate hospital and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) capacity. But as health services are overwhelmed, patients who would previously have been admitted to hospital for observation are cared for at home; patients who might previously have been ventilated in ICU are kept on hospital wards, with less invasive methods of breathing support such as continuous positive airways pressure (CPAP) to keep them going; and ventilation on ICU is reserved for the sickest of the sick.

In fact, since the first wave of the pandemic, it has become clear that outcomes for most patients are better if mechanical ventilation can be avoided. A move by hospitals to nurse patients 'prone' (lying on their fronts) as much as possible, and to delay mechanical ventilation where feasible, has been at least in part credited with the improved survival rates seen since the first wave.

To make matters more confusing still, definitions of mild, moderate and severe infection also vary between countries.

All these variables make it impossible to offer completely accurate predictions of average time to hospital admission, or average time before ICU recovery. The figures in this article are based largely on a report by the World Health Organization of the Chinese experience. Some reflect the experience of other European countries.

to read more from the source :  HERE