Symptoms can last much longer than expected--CDC study

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Symptoms can last much longer than expected--CDC study

Wed, 2020-09-02 12:26 — mike kraft

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) CDC provides credible COVID-19 health information to the U.S. CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

(CNN) The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said most people who tested positive for Covid-19 can return to work or school 10 days after the onset of symptoms, unless the illness requires hospitalization.

But new research suggest the virus and its symptoms are often nowhere near finished by that benchmark.

Patients might need to wait over a month before being retested to know whether they have cleared the virus, according to research published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal.

The study also suggests about 1 in 5 negative test results are actually false negatives, meaning many infected people are still spreading the virus without knowing it after testing negative.

And even after testing negative, many patients have said their symptoms last months longer. Such symptoms include brain fog, body aches, mood problems and the loss of smell.

"We think that this long-term damage may in part be due to vascular damage -- kind of a footprint that the virus leaves even when it's gone from the body," said Dr. William Li, president and medical director of the nonprofit Angiogenesis Foundation.

Researchers have found the virus damaging blood vessels that connect the entire body, Li said. It isn't clear when "long haul" patients will be back to the lives they had before, he added.

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