Since the COVID 19 virus became a pandemic, medical specialists have been trying to understand how the COVID 19 virus is spread from person to person, how it attacks the body and its long term effect on the body.
According to health experts, the COVID 19 virus affects the lower tract of your airway. The virus enters the body when you breathe in infected droplets or when you touch a contaminated surface then touch your eyes, nose, or mouth.
When virus particles reach the throat, it can enter the cells that line the respiratory tract in the lungs and then the virus can begin to replicate and damage the cells in the lungs.
As the virus multiplies, the immune system launches a response to try and repair the damage and fight off the virus. In severe cases, when the virus reaches the lungs it triggers inflammatory mediators making it difficult for the lungs to supply oxygen to the bloodstream, instead, the lung fills up with fluid leading to difficulty breathing. Essentially the lungs begin to drown and that can lead to severe pneumonia and pneumonia can progress to sepsis and multi-organ failure.
A study in China shows that recovered patients from the virus have lingering issues with body organs other than the lungs such as the liver, the kidney and the heart and specialists are concerned that the health issues will linger long after the COVID 19 pandemic is over.
According to Khalilah Gates, a pulmonologist and assistant professor of pulmonary critical care and medical education at Northwestern University’s Feinberg school of medicine, the excessive inflammatory response some people’s body produces to fight the virus exerts too much pressure on the other organs, the kidney, the liver and the heart which leaves some damages to these organs.
Gates speculates it will take time for the body to heal from the excessive exertion particularly the lungs and the healing process of the lungs can lead to irreversible scarring (fibrosis), that can have an impact on the lung function in the long run and reduced lung capacity, which could lead to shortness of breath to a long-term need for oxygen.
Harvard researchers say that the inflammation and the high fever caused by the virus could weaken the heart and increase the patient’s risk for cardiac abnormalities such as blood clotting. Another researcher, Len Horovitz, speculates that the COVID 19 virus patients may develop heart arrhythmias, congestive heart failure and myocarditis or pericarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle).
It is less likely that people with mild symptoms of the COVID 19 virus will have these long-term effects, however.
