For Some, the First Wave Isn’t Over
The second wave of COVID-19 continues to devastate Israel with over 21,000 active cases, over 150 in critical condition, 368 fatalities, and almost 1,700 new cases diagnosed daily. However, of the thousands who have recovered from the virus, many haven’t fully recovered from the first wave of the pandemic.
All over the world, patients who were diagnosed, hospitalized, treated and recovered from COVID-19 are seeing the potential long term effects of this disease months later, with symptoms ranging from shortness of breath, to low oxygen levels in the blood, to muscle weakness, to gastrointestinal issues, to headaches, to temporary loss of smell and taste, to mental symptoms like short term memory loss, brain fog and depression. One study by the UK National Health Service theorized that of Covid-19 patients who have required hospitalization, 45 percent will need ongoing medical care, 4 percent will require inpatient rehabilitation, and 1 percent will permanently require acute care. At this point, the Sheba Medical Center in Tel-Aviv has seen 10 percent of their coronavirus patients at their recently established “follow-up clinic”, where those suffering from long term symptoms of the virus can come to seek further treatment. Dr. Amir Onn, the pulmonology oncology chief at the medical center said that “One question that came up in the beginning was whether the coronavirus was like any other illness...Our impression at this point is that it’s something different, for one thing because people can be cured according to the lab results – the virus no longer shows up in their system – when they haven’t yet physically recovered.” Similarly, Meir Medical Center in Kfar Sava opened their own COVID-19 recovery clinic just two weeks ago, and has already treated 100 citizens for COVID-19 recovery symptoms.
There is also global dispute over the length of time survivors of COVID-19 are immune to the disease. Preliminary studies across China, Germany and Britain have shown that defensive antibodies produced by the body only last a few months at most, and Daniel Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London, said that "Most people make them (antibodies), but often they can wane rather rapidly, suggesting there could be little immunity." However, at this point few people have been hospitalized and diagnosed with COVID-19 for a second time, but more time is needed to see if that is the case, and to see how long immunity actually lasts.