With every cough, many of the people in the country who have been persistent in their own four walls are asking themselves: Is that Covid-19? In the daily NDR podcast, virologist Drosten specifies the symptoms, talks about possible permanent damage and cases without symptoms.
In many places, people are wondering what the symptoms of Covid-19 lung disease are at the slightest sign of a scratchy throat, an unexpected sneeze, or excessive fatigue. The characteristics of the new condition are often clearly summarized in tables – but then questions remain unanswered because the symptoms sometimes resemble those of the flu or the cold. And what about those cases that have no symptoms at all? The reports in the media keep saying that one could have had the disease without noticing it. In the daily NDR podcast, virologist Christian Drosten from the Berlin Charité explained the symptoms again.
Fever and dry cough to watch out for – even after several weeks with gained Covid 19 experience. The dry cough is in the foreground, says Drosten, the fever can also show up as a shiver. These two symptoms are the “key symptoms”, ie the characteristics that most clearly indicate the disease. A sore throat could be added, but a runny nose is less common.
Where the cold could come from
Drosten also has a possible explanation that some patients still have a runny nose. This is actually atypical for Covid-19. But it is conceivable that a person infected with Sars-Cov-2 could also have contracted other cold viruses. That is quite normal with the viruses common in this country. There could be parallel infections with two or three different viruses. In this respect, it is conceivable that the sometimes described runny nose is triggered by another pathogen and is not part of the clinical picture of Covid-19.
One of the somewhat eerie properties of lung disease is that it can go unnoticed. At least numerous reports point to this. Drosten is skeptical here. The physicians continue to have only “very limited ideas” about the frequency of this “asymptomal course”. “We can only guess that there is such a thing.” The virologist points to a problem in data collection: if you test a person positively and they have no symptoms, this goes into the studies. But it could be that after three days the person still ascertains the characteristics of the disease. “Then you didn’t ask again,” said Drosten. So the doctors would not know about it.
In cases in and around Munich it was the case that patients later admitted that they still had mild symptoms, but did not take them seriously. According to Drosten, it could be that “asymptomatic” does not exist in most cases and actually means “mild-symptomatic”. But here, too, the following applies: These are considerations that should first be investigated with scientific research.
Indications of permanent damage
According to Drosten, there is also evidence of permanent damage from Covid 19 disease. Especially with severe courses, it is the case that the patients need a very long time to recover. Even a month after discharge from the hospital, they were still generally weak. Lung function also does not appear to be good after severe infection. To what extent permanent damage can be expected permanently, Drosten did not say – since it is a completely new disease, definitive statements about it should not be possible.
A positive side effect of the currently practiced “social distancing” could be that the flu viruses do not spread any further. The season is already coming to an end, but he would “not be surprised” if the end of the year is particularly “abrupt”, says the virologist. According to Drosten, it can also be assumed that the novel corona virus will become native to our latitudes. “It looks a lot like it.” Even after the 60 to 70 percent of the population critical for the end of the pandemic was infected, the virus would continue to spread until everyone had it, the expert said. The other corona viruses also managed to keep infecting new groups of people.
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