THE FACADE OF RECOVERY

While the government harps on recovered cases, it must also closely track them as studies hint recovery offers no surety of good health

- BHAGIRATH SRIVAS

THIRTY-NINE-year-old Jugal Kishore Sharma of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, tested positive for COVID-19 on April 3 and declared COVIDfree on April 27. But his lungs still show infections and a short walk makes him gasp for breath. “I have had X-rays four times in this period. Doctors say there are infections,” he says. Sharma feels he would be asthmatic in future, though he now is one of the 1.2 million Indians who have recovered from COVID-19.

The world now has 11.6 million people to have recovered from COVID-19, and countries, including India, have started monitoring this set of population because several studies hint at long-term impacts of the infection on the body. There have been cases in the country where recovered persons have again contracted COVID-19. In order to formulate a treatment code and also to help in vaccine development, monitoring the health of such recovered patients is critical.

Take the case of Sushila, a 38-year-old teacher in Delhi who tested positive for COVID-19 on June 10. Two weeks later, she assumed to have recovered because the symptoms had receded. She did not get tests done. Now, Sushila says, she gets panic attacks. “During these attacks, my heart beats very fast. Sometimes I feel as if my heart would burst out,” she says. “It is a condition new to me,” she adds.

Avnish Chaudhury, a journalist with a television channel, has reconciled to the fact that he would no longer breathe normally. He contracted COVID-19 in May and two months after his recovery, he still feels fatigued, has irregular heartbeats and a strange sense of not being able to do regular chores.