After five months of being home, Danielle Cahue was looking forward to returning to campus that is, until she got there. When the 19-year-old sophomore arrived at Illinois State University, she saw her peers gathering in large groups without masks, disregarding the universitys COVID-19 guidelines.
There have been more than 400 positive cases of COVID-19 at Illinois State as of Friday. The pandemic has stressed her mental health, especially when she sees her classmates acting carelessly about safety and social distancing, Cahue said. She tries to leave her on-campus apartment as little as possible, even delaying buying groceries until she has almost no food left.
This is the most anxious I've ever been, I think, in my entire life, Cahue told NBC News. It has made it a lot worse and made me kind of worried just to do anything.
More than half of 50,307 college students who participated in the American College Health Association's Spring 2020 National College Health Assessment reported receiving mental health services from their current campus health or counseling center in the last year. Those numbers are expected to dramatically increase as students return to college this fall, experts predict.
Many experts believe there's going to be a second curve, which is the mental health impact of COVID, said Alison Malmon, founder and executive director of the nonprofit organization Active Minds, a group geared toward bringing mental health awareness and education to young adults. And schools have a responsibility to be responsive to their students' mental health.
Preliminary data shows the pandemic has already negatively affected peoples mental health, particularly college students, according to Catherine Grus, the American Psychological Associations chief education officer.
They're seeing higher levels of depression, they're having financial insecurity, which is also leading to mental health problems, she said. And this is concerning because, before the pandemic, we knew that college students were increasingly having mental health concerns. So, now you add the pandemic and we have a population thats particularly in greater need for mental health services.
In a survey conducted by Active Minds in April, 91 percent of the 2,086 college students surveyed reported that COVID-19 had added greater "stress and anxiety" to their lives, while 81 percent reported the pandemic caused them "disappointment and sadness."
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Maryorie Delgado, a senior at Brigham Young University, said the pandemic is intensifying her responsibilities at home and at school. The 23-year-old, whose family immigrated from Peru, helps her father manage their used car dealership in Orem, Utah, while attending school full-time.
"So a lot of just the stress from my family falls on me because basically I am the oldest and I speak the language and my parents helped me out with my tuition. And so, I feel like I owe them a lot and then they feel like I need to help them a lot," Delgado said. "The load of that plus, honestly, going to school, everything shutting down, it's just like so much stress."
With the transition to remote learning and most students leaving campuses in the spring, schools turned to telehealth to continue providing students with counseling services, support groups and even creating task forces dedicated to mental health.
But some students, like Michigan State University student Devont Henderson, said it wasnt an ideal situation.
I will tell you it's very challenging to schedule a therapy session through Zoom, Henderson said. I would much prefer just to see my therapist in person, so that is a big concern of mine.
Michigan State University, which recently announced that it would conduct its fall semester remotely, said 814 students asked for mental health services this summer as compared to 616 students in the summer of 2019 -- a 32 percent increase. The uptick has been attributed in part to expanded telehealth services, as well as stress and anxiety surrounding the pandemic, a university spokesperson said.
Macy Faust, a junior at the University of North Texas who is part of the schools Active Minds chapter, said she and her friends held weekly check-ins over Zoom during the spring semester to solve things like turning in assignments or how to access the schools counseling center, and to generally provide support for each other. They invited other UNT students to join, and Faust said they plan to continue the check-in sessions heading into the fall.
If you have access, therapy is an amazing tool just to kind of talk out what you're feeling and to expand on your coping skills, but also participate in peer support groups, she said.
Some schools, like Howard University, are also working to address the fact that the pandemic has disproportionately affected Black Americans and people of color who have experienced higher mortality rates due to the coronavirus, as well as higher rates of unemployment.
Mike Barnes, director of the counseling center at Howard, said the school is working to educate students on issues such as depression and anxiety, as well as how to go to school in a virtual setting. They have also expanded their social media presence to send students encouraging messages over the last few months, most recently posting on Twitter, Wishing all Bison a good first week. With every bump in the road that you experience.....there is support a call, email or DM away.
Many of our students have backgrounds that are fraught with frustrations and challenges and so forth. And so getting to Howard is, sometimes, a haven away from home, Barnes said. And so we've had to deal with students who have gone back home during the spring and obviously the summer, and live in what we've called a toxic environment or, not such a pleasant situation.
Some students are feeling anxious and unsure about the fall semester as coronavirus outbreaks have already forced some schools to send students home and switch to fully remote instruction.
North Carolina State on Thursday asked students to move out of dorms, following the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which also canceled in-person instruction for the fall semester after it saw its positivity rate jump from 2.8 percent to 13.6 percent within its first week.
Other colleges like the University of Notre Dame insist that students can safely return to campus, despite continued COVID-19 cases, which is causing some students, like sophomore Hailey Abrams, to worry about her exposure to the virus.
There's a huge range of possibilities of how this disease can affect people and knowing that it spreads so quickly within close proximity, it's a little nerve-wracking to be on a college campus, in a dorm, with so many other people, with a disease that spreads so quickly like this, she said.
Nonetheless, mental health professionals are urging students to remain hopeful and to take care of themselves as the semester begins.
I know that there's a ton of pain and tragedy associated with the pandemic and with the associated increased awareness and backlash around social inequity. What I want to try to get across to people is maintain hope. I have nothing but hope, said Allen OBarr, UNCs counseling and psychological services director. I think that the way to do that is to really focus on the brief moments of joy.
TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reportsas of 10:00 a.m., on August 30, 2020, there have been 430,940 total confirmatory laboratory results receivedfor COVID-19, with 10,110 total cases and 213 deaths.
DHHRhas confirmed the death of an 89-year old male from Kanawha County. As wehonor the life of this gentleman, we must continue to do our part to slow the growth of thisvirus in West Virginia, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. Our thoughtsgo out to all who are grieving during this time.
CASESPER COUNTY: Barbour (33), Berkeley (798), Boone(139), Braxton (9), Brooke (88), Cabell (530), Calhoun (9), Clay (26),Doddridge (6), Fayette (268), Gilmer (18), Grant (139), Greenbrier (106),Hampshire (92), Hancock (122), Hardy (73), Harrison (265), Jackson (201),Jefferson (355), Kanawha (1,393), Lewis (32), Lincoln (115), Logan (479),Marion (217), Marshall (133), Mason (102), McDowell (70), Mercer (297), Mineral(144), Mingo (236), Monongalia (1,113), Monroe (117), Morgan (37), Nicholas(52), Ohio (290), Pendleton (44), Pleasants (15), Pocahontas (42), Preston(140), Putnam (278), Raleigh (356), Randolph (223), Ritchie (5), Roane (29),Summers (19), Taylor (105), Tucker (11), Tyler (15), Upshur (43), Wayne (248),Webster (7), Wetzel (46), Wirt (9), Wood (305), Wyoming (66).
Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the localhealth department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain countymay not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual inquestion may have crossed the state border to be tested.
Pleasevisit the dashboard located at www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.
Jessika Boles, lead of the Child Life Team at Monroe Carell Jr. Childrens Hospital, will offer advice on talking to kids about COVID-19 at the next meeting of theMargaret Cuninggim Womens CentersParenting Group.
The discussion is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 10, at noon on Zoom.
Please RSVP in advance if you plan to attend.
The Oakland Athletics announced Sunday that their game in Houston was cancelled due to a positive coronavirus case.
In a statement, the team said a member of the organization tested positive and Major League Baseball decided to postpone the game scheduled for Sunday at Minute Maid Park.
The entire team was tested and conducted contact tracing and will now isolate in Houston following safety precautions.
No further details were provided
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
'Disease tolerance' is the ability of an individual, due to a genetic predisposition or some aspect of behavior or lifestyle, to thrive despite being infected with an amount of pathogen that sickens others. It might play a role in asymptomatic coronavirus infections. Alexander Spatari/Getty Images hide caption
'Disease tolerance' is the ability of an individual, due to a genetic predisposition or some aspect of behavior or lifestyle, to thrive despite being infected with an amount of pathogen that sickens others. It might play a role in asymptomatic coronavirus infections.
One of the reasons Covid-19 has spread so swiftly around the globe is that for the first days after infection, people feel healthy. Instead of staying home in bed, they may be out and about, unknowingly passing the virus along. But in addition to these pre-symptomatic patients, the relentless silent spread of this pandemic is also facilitated by a more mysterious group of people: the so-called asymptomatics.
According to various estimates, between 20 and 45 percent of the people who get COVID-19 and possibly more, according to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sail through a coronavirus infection without realizing they ever had it. No fever or chills. No loss of smell or taste. No breathing difficulties. They don't feel a thing.
Asymptomatic cases are not unique to COVID-19. They occur with the regular flu, and probably also featured in the 1918 pandemic, according to epidemiologist Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London. But scientists aren't sure why certain people weather COVID-19 unscathed. "That is a tremendous mystery at this point," says Donald Thea, an infectious disease expert at Boston University's School of Public Health.
The prevailing theory is that their immune systems fight off the virus so efficiently that they never get sick. But some scientists are confident that the immune system's aggressive response, the churning out of antibodies and other molecules to eliminate an infection, is only part of the story.
These experts are learning that the human body may not always wage an all-out war on viruses and other pathogens. It may also be capable of accommodating an infection, sometimes so seamlessly that no symptoms emerge. This phenomenon, known as disease tolerance, is well-known in plants but has only been documented in animals within the last 15 years.
Hints that 'disease tolerance' is at work
Disease tolerance is the ability of an individual, due to a genetic predisposition or some aspect of behavior or lifestyle, to thrive despite being infected with an amount of pathogen that sickens others. Tolerance takes different forms, depending on the infection. For example, when infected with cholera, which causes watery diarrhea that can quickly kill through dehydration, the body might mobilize mechanisms that maintain fluid and electrolyte balance. During other infections, the body might tweak metabolism or activate gut microbes whatever internal adjustment is needed to prevent or repair tissue damage or to make a germ less vicious.
"Why, if they have these abnormalities, are they healthy? Potentially because they have disease tolerance mechanisms engaged. These are the people we need to study."
Janelle Ayres, physiologist, Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Researchers who study these processes rely on invasive experiments that cannot be done in people. Nevertheless, they view asymptomatic infections as evidence that disease tolerance occurs in humans. At least 90 percent of those infected with the tuberculosis bacterium don't get sick. The same is true for many of the 1.5 billion of people globally who live with parasitic worms called helminths in their intestines. "Despite the fact that these worms are very large organisms and they basically migrate through your tissues and cause damage, many people are asymptomatic. They don't even know they're infected," says Irah King, a professor of immunology at McGill University. "And so then the question becomes, what does the body do to tolerate these types of invasive infections?"
While scientists have observed the physiological processes that minimize tissue damage during infections in animals for decades, it's only more recently that they've begun to think about them in terms of disease tolerance. For example, King and colleagues have identified specific immune cells in mice that increase the resilience of blood vessels during a helminth infection, leading to less intestinal bleeding, even when the same number of worms are present.
"This has been demonstrated in plants, bacteria, other mammalian species," King says.
"Why would we think that humans would not have developed these types of mechanisms to promote and maintain our health in the face of infection?" he adds.
Maybe germs aren't the enemy: A more nuanced view
In a recent Frontiers in Immunology editorial, King and his McGill colleague Maziar Divangahi describe their long-term hopes for the field: A deeper understanding of disease tolerance, they write, could lead to "a new golden age of infectious disease research and discovery."
Scientists have traditionally viewed germs as the enemy, an approach that has generated invaluable antibiotics and vaccines. But more recently, researchers have come to understand that the human body is colonized by trillions of microbes that are essential to optimal health, and that the relationship between humans and germs is more nuanced.
Meddlesome viruses and bacteria have been around since life began, so it makes sense that animals evolved ways to manage as well as fight them. Attacking a pathogen can be effective, but it can also backfire. For one thing, infectious agents find ways to evade the immune system. Moreover, the immune response itself, if unchecked, can turn lethal, applying its destructive force to the body's own organs.
"With things like COVID, I think it's going to be very parallel to TB, where you have this Goldilocks situation," says Andrew Olive, an immunologist at Michigan State University, "where you need that perfect amount of inflammation to control the virus and not damage the lungs."
Some of the key disease tolerance mechanisms scientists have identified aim to keep inflammation within that narrow window. For example, immune cells called alveolar macrophages in the lung suppress inflammation once the threat posed by the pathogen diminishes.
Much is still unknown about why there is such a wide range of responses to COVID-19, from asymptomatic to mildly sick to out of commission for weeks at home to full-on organ failure. "It's very, very early days here," says Andrew Read, an infectious disease expert at Pennsylvania State University who helped identify disease tolerance in animals. Read believes disease tolerance may at least partially explain why some infected people have mild symptoms or none at all. This may be because they're better at scavenging toxic byproducts, he says, "or replenishing their lung tissues at faster rates, those sorts of things."
Asymptomatic COVID-19 infections
The mainstream scientific view of asymptomatics is that their immune systems are especially well-tuned. This could explain why children and young adults make up the majority of people without symptoms because the immune system naturally deteriorates with age. It's also possible that the immune systems of asymptomatics have been primed by a previous infection with a milder coronavirus, like those that cause the common cold.
Asymptomatic cases don't get much attention from medical researchers, in part because these people don't go to the doctor and thus are tough to track down. But Janelle Ayres, a physiologist and infectious disease expert at the Salk Institute For Biological Studies who has been a leader in disease tolerance research, studies precisely the mice that don't get sick.
The staple of this research is something called the "lethal dose 50" test, which consists of giving a group of mice enough pathogen to kill half. By comparing the mice that live with those that die, she pinpoints the specific aspects of their physiology that enable them to survive the infection. She has performed this experiment scores of times using a variety of pathogens. The goal is to figure out how to activate health-sustaining responses in all animals.
A hallmark of these experiments and something that surprised her at first is that the half that survive the lethal dose are perky. They are completely unruffled by the same quantity of pathogen that kills their counterparts. "I thought going into this ... that all would get sick, that half would live and half would die, but that isn't what I found," Ayres says. "I found that half got sick and died, and the other half never got sick and lived."
Ayres sees something similar happening in the COVID-19 pandemic. Like her mice, asymptomatic people infected with the novel coronavirus seem to have similar amounts of the virus in their bodies as the people who fall ill, yet for some reason they stay healthy. Studies show that their lungs often display damage on CT scans, yet they are not struggling for breath (though it remains to be seen whether they will fully escape long-term impacts). Moreover, a small recent study suggests that people who are asymptomatic mount a weaker immune response than those who get sick suggesting that mechanisms are at work that have nothing to do with fighting infection.
"Why, if they have these abnormalities, are they healthy?" asks Ayres. "Potentially because they have disease tolerance mechanisms engaged. These are the people we need to study."
The goal of disease tolerance research is to decipher the mechanisms that keep infected people healthy and turn them into therapies that benefit everyone. "You want to have a drought-tolerant plant, for obvious reasons, so why wouldn't we want to have a virus-tolerant person?" Read asks.
A 2018 experiment in Ayres' lab offered proof of concept for that goal. The team gave a diarrhea-causing infection to mice in a lethal dose 50 trial, then compared tissue from the mice that died with those that survived, looking for differences. They discovered that the asymptomatic mice had utilized their iron stores to route extra glucose to the hungry bacteria, and that the pacified germs no longer posed a threat. The team subsequently turned this observation into a treatment. In further experiments, they administered iron supplements to the mice and all the animals survived, even when the pathogen dose was upped a thousandfold.
When the pandemic hit, Ayres was already studying mice with pneumonia and the signature malady of COVID-19, acute respiratory distress syndrome, which can be triggered by various infections. Her lab has identified markers that may inform candidate pathways to target for treatment. The next step is to compare people who progressed to severe stages of COVID-19 with those who are asymptomatic to see whether markers emerge that resemble the ones she's found in mice.
If a medicine is developed, it would work differently from anything that's currently on the market because it would be lung-specific, not disease-specific, and would ease respiratory distress regardless of which pathogen is responsible.
But intriguing as this prospect is, most experts caution that disease tolerance is a new field and tangible benefits are likely many years off. The work involves measuring not only symptoms but the levels of a pathogen in the body, which means killing an animal and searching all of its tissues. "You can't really do controlled biological experiments in humans," Olive says.
In addition, there are countless disease tolerance pathways. "Every time we figure one out, we find we have 10 more things we don't understand," King says. Things will differ with each disease, he adds, "so that becomes a bit overwhelming."
Nevertheless, a growing number of experts agree that disease tolerance research could have profound implications for treating infectious disease in the future. Microbiology and infectious disease research has "all been focused on the pathogen as an invader that has to be eliminated some way," says virologist Jeremy Luban of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. And as Ayres makes clear, he says, "what we really should be thinking about is how do we keep the person from getting sick."
Emily Laber-Warren directs the health and science reporting program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
This story was produced by Undark, a nonprofit, editorially independent digital magazine exploring the intersection of science and society.
DHEC continues to emphasize the importance of testing, said Dr. Brannon Traxler, DHEC Physician. While many people with COVID-19 have mild or no symptoms, it is still possible that they could be infected and pass the disease to friends, family, and loved ones. Meanwhile, others dont know that theyve been in close contact (within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes) with someone with confirmed COVID-19. Therefore, we continue to provide no out-of-pocket costs community testing events open to anyone who would like to be tested.
TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reportsas of 10:00 a.m., on August 27, 2020, there have been 413,634 total confirmatory laboratory results receivedfor COVID-19, with 9,633 total cases and 199 deaths.
DHHR hasconfirmed the deaths of a 93-year old male fromFayette County, an 81-year old male from Clay County, a 90-year old female fromMercer County, a 67-year old female from Logan County, a 93-year old male fromLogan County, an 81-year old female from Logan County, an 89-year old male fromMonroe County, a 90-year old male from Monroe County, and a 72-year old femalefrom Kanawha County. The passing of these West Virginians isreported with a heavy heart and we extend our deepest sympathies to their lovedones, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary.
CASESPER COUNTY: Barbour(33), Berkeley (780), Boone (132), Braxton (9), Brooke (85), Cabell (502),Calhoun (8), Clay (19), Doddridge (6), Fayette (215), Gilmer (18), Grant (139),Greenbrier (99), Hampshire (91), Hancock (118), Hardy (70), Harrison (260),Jackson (198), Jefferson (336), Kanawha (1,294), Lewis (32), Lincoln (111),Logan (454), Marion (212), Marshall (133), Mason (94), McDowell (71), Mercer(287), Mineral (140), Mingo (224), Monongalia (1,075), Monroe (95), Morgan(37), Nicholas (47), Ohio (288), Pendleton (44), Pleasants (14), Pocahontas(42), Preston (136), Putnam (257), Raleigh (332), Randolph (221), Ritchie (3),Roane (24), Summers (18), Taylor (103), Tucker (11), Tyler (15), Upshur (43),Wayne (238), Webster (7), Wetzel (45), Wirt (9), Wood (298), Wyoming (61).
Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the localhealth department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain countymay not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual inquestion may have crossed the state border to be tested.Such is the case of Marshall,McDowell, Ohio, and Roane counties in this report.
Pleasevisit the dashboard located at www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.
Ron Trask spent 11 days on a ventilator and nearly died of COVID-19 at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. The 69-year-old Corinth resident doesnt remember much from his harrowing, 39-day stay.
Rehabilitation is slow and arduous, and he doesnt know if hell ever feel the same as before he contracted COVID-19 in April.
I had to learn to feed myself, walk again and sign my name again, Trask said.
When her sickness from COVID-19 was at its peak, Alaina Tomlinson kept an oxygen monitor by her bedside. Most nights, she woke up in the darkness gasping for breath.
I played what I called the oxygen game at night, said Tomlinson, 40, of Cumberland. There was a lot of anxiety.
Tomlinson had 10 minutes to get her oxygen levels above 90 percent or she would have to go to the hospital. She would calm herself, take deep breaths and check the oxygen monitor. While she was never hospitalized, a few times she crossed the 90 percent threshold just in time to avoid a hospital trip.
Trasks wife, Sue, wasnt allowed to see him because of hospital visitation restrictions. So she sat by the phone for hours, waiting for updates.
One time, I was told his kidneys were shutting down and he probably wouldnt make it, she said. I was writing his obituary. In the back of your mind you always want to have hope, but in my heart I didnt believe it. By the grace of God he came back.
Since March 12, when the state confirmed its first case of COVID-19, more than 4,400 Mainers have contracted the disease. The virus has killed 132 of them, and nearly 3,900 have recovered. The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram interviewed five people who survived the ordeal and described the often-terrifying experience.
COVID-19 is a new disease that scientists are still learning about. The typical symptoms are shortness of breath, fever and coughing, and while the disease can be fairly mild for some, it can life-threatening for others. And even for people who are not in danger of dying, the complications can be long-lasting, extending perhaps for years, decades or even the rest of their lives.
Many of those categorized as recovered by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention have endured months of lingering side-effects and complications.
Sara Paulsen said she has scarring in her lungs, and even months after she recovered from COVID-19, has difficulty breathing and chest pain.
Research shows some patients are suffering from long-term complications even after patients test negative. A July study published in the Lancet medical journal shows that out of 55 patients in China who were cleared of the virus, 35 were suffering from symptoms three months later. Of those, 14 had lung abnormalities.
Another troubling complication is continued heart problems after COVID-19 has cleared the body. A German study published in July in JAMA Cardiology found that 60 of 100 patients studied had myocardial inflammation after recovering from COVID-19, and 78 of 100 showed abnormalities in MRI scans of the heart post-COVID-19.
And according to a preliminary study published in July in the scholarly journal Brain, severe COVID-19 can lead to neurological complications, including inflammation disorders, called CNS inflammatory syndrome.
More common lingering complications include fatigue, headaches, joint pain and shortness of breath.
The aftereffects of COVID-19 have become so common that survivors with continuing symptoms are now called long-haulers in the national media. All five Mainers who recovered from COVID-19 and interviewed by the Press Herald/Sunday Telegram said they are still suffering from aftereffects of the disease.
Dr. Eric Haskell, a MaineHealth primary care doctor based in Cape Elizabeth, said he has treated dozens of COVID-19 patients, and its been difficult because the science is still developing on how best to treat the disease. So he keeps up on the latest research on what scientists are learning about how to treat COVID-19. There is not a course of treatment to clear the virus, like there is with taking antibiotics to clear a bacterial infection. They work to keep patients hydrated, reduce pain and fevers, and help with breathing, if needed.
Its challenging both as patients and providers, with the anxiety of the unknown, Haskell said. There isnt a lot we can do. We do our best to support them.
Haskell said much of what can be done is case management, such as helping people with alternative living arrangements, like a hotel room, if they cant easily isolate themselves in their homes. Or they are treating conditions caused by COVID-19, such as heart inflammation.
What is our endpoint? When do we stop the treatment? There isnt a clear answer, Haskell said.
COVID-19 has hit minority communities in Maine disproportionately hard, taking up about 27 percent of the total cases despite Maines minority population being only 5 percent statewide. There are a number of reasons minorities are more likely to be at risk, public health experts say. For instance, minorities are more likely to have jobs that dont allow for working remotely, such as a home health aide. Or they have jobs where they work side by side with other employees, such as factory work, or interact a lot with the public. They are also more likely to live in multigenerational households, with more people in tighter quarters, making the virus more easily transmitted within a household.
Fatuma Hussein, founder of the Immigrant Resource Center of Maine nonprofit, said the pandemic is shining a spotlight on inequality.
What COVID has done is tangibly unveiled the disproportionate and lack of equity in regards to communities of color, Hussein said. It has really shown that for a person of color, nothing is equal for you.
The virus directly affected Husseins Lewiston-based nonprofit, where three staff members were infected with COVID-19 at the same time, and one additional employee was exposed.
By the time (the state) started talking about prevention and focusing on our communities, it was too late. COVID had already infected our communities, Hussein said.
For her nonprofit, that meant the remaining employees had to scramble to provide services that were stacking up because of the other workers who were ill.
I would go from hosting all meetings every day to providing direct services to people at night, whether that was going to Panera to pick up food for a family at night or picking up a load of food from BJs (Wholesale Club), Hussein said.
RON TRASK
Ron Trask, 69, of Corinth said he thought he was getting a head cold in April, but within days his symptoms worsened.
I wasnt getting any better, and I started having trouble breathing, Trask said. He doesnt know how he contracted COVID-19, but suspects spending time with friends inside a garage working on an antique car may have been how he was exposed.
He got a test, it came back positive, and within days he was in the hospital, where he would spend the next 39 days, 11 on a ventilator. Trask said he doesnt remember much, but he does recall the isolation, with no family or friends allowed to visit.
The hours went by with Trask lying alone in a hospital.
Youre there all by yourself, and you dont know whats going on, Trask said. Even though the doctors and nurses are coming in with spacesuits on, youre still glad to see them.
Sue Trask, Rons wife, said since she couldnt visit, she would drive by the hospital often. I somehow felt closer to him, just driving by, said Sue Trask, 59.
A retired truck driver, Trask said he is still weak and is having complications months after he left the hospital. My short-term memory is shot, Trask said. I dont have any strength or stamina anymore. I use a walker. The heat bothers me terrible.
Trask said he is also having short-term memory problems, and sometimes has uncomfortable sensations in his lungs. Doctors told him they dont know how long immunity lasts, so when he goes out now, hes very careful.
Trask said he hates to see people not wearing masks, especially people near his age, a more vulnerable age group.
Its so sad to see people my own age think this virus isnt anything to worry about, Trask said. Too bad a lot of the public thinks this is nothing. They really should take it serious.
ALAINA TOMLINSON
Tomlinson, 40, of Cumberland, said its a mystery how she contracted COVID-19 in June, but she is still dealing with aftereffects months later.
I had pretty much every symptom in the book, fever, nausea, coughing, chills, full body rash, shortness of breath, Tomlinson said. I had a lot of weird skin sensations, burning, tingling, hot and cold.
She lost her sense of taste and smell, and she had a metallic taste in her mouth. She had a headache that lasted at least 20 days.
But Tomlinson said by far the scariest symptom was gasping for breath. She was evaluated at a Falmouth respiratory center set up by MaineHealth, and had to keep the oxygen monitor by her bed.
The shortness of breath made sleeping difficult.
I was just absolutely exhausted, and yet I could not sleep, Tomlinson said. Theres a lot of worry and anxiety because you are not in control.
Doctors gave her breathing exercises to try to build up her lung capacity.
I would take five deep breaths, hold the sixth deep breath for five seconds and then on the next exhale cough, Tomlinson said. It took weeks, but her breathing eventually improved.
Tomlinson, a Sanford High School science teacher, said shes still fatigued, and walking up and down stairs tires her now. Lingering symptoms include frequent headaches, joint pain and short-term memory loss. And shes worried about school reopening, although she wants to teach some days in-person. Sanford approved a hybrid plan, so she is teaching in-person four days per week to limited class sizes.
We dont know what the long-term impacts of this disease are yet, Tomlinson said. That gives me pause. Im worried about being reinfected because we dont know how long immunity lasts.
FOZIA ROBLEH
Fozia Robleh, 41, of Lewiston said she visited some friends inside their homes in early June, and thats how she believes she was exposed to the coronavirus.
I started coughing, and had a lot of headache, Robleh said. I told my daughter to stay away from me, this is not normal.
She got tested soon thereafter, and was COVID-19 positive.
Robleh, an immigrant from Djibouti, said she had almost all the symptoms.
I had headaches, body aches, lost smell and taste, out of breath, abnormal heart rate. I would get dizzy. I just didnt have a fever, Robleh said.
After two weeks, she still had headaches, neck pain and an abnormal heart rate. She was isolated in her own home, staying away from her 21-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son. Local immigrant groups helped her by delivering food to their door.
I called the CDC, and they were telling me I was good to go (because more than two weeks had passed), but I was still feeling sick, Robleh said. So she got tested again, and was still positive.
Robleh said her heartbeat became so irregular that in early July she spent a night at St. Marys Regional Medical Center in Lewiston for monitoring.
By late July, she started feeling better and a subsequent test on July 28 came back negative.
But Robleh said she is still not feeling 100 percent.
I am feeling tired all the time, Robleh said. My heartbeat is still irregular, I cough easily and cant sleep very well.
WHITNEY PARRISH
Parrish, 33, of Hallowell, said in late April she started having a deep, painful cough and a fever.
She went to Mid-Coast Hospital in Brunswick, and because tests at that time were in short supply, she was not given a test. At that time, tests were prioritized for front-line health care workers, those living in congregate care centers and those already hospitalized.
They told me, We are going to presume you have it, but go home and dont be around anyone,' said Parrish, an advocate who works in Bangor.
Parrish said her symptoms worsened.
I was short of breath, just going upstairs made me out of breath, and I was sleeping all day, Parrish said. Weeks passed, and she was getting worse.
Intense headaches began, and she started getting pains in her chest.
I was like, What am I supposed to do, this isnt getting any better. Im starting to get nervous,' Parrish said.
Alarmed by the chest pains and an accelerated heart rate, Parrish said she went to MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta, where she underwent a battery of tests.
They said, We dont really know whats happening to you, but we want to make sure youre OK. Every patient we see, this looks different,' Parrish said.
The tests did not show any underlying health conditions, and after a few more weeks, she finally started feeling better. But Parrish said she still tires easily, is more headache-prone and has short-term memory problems.
It was miserable for me, and yet I know its so much worse for other folks, Parrish said.
SARA PAULSEN
Sara Paulsen, 37, said she probably became exposed to COVID-19 while giving many presentations at schools in March about teen mental health, in the final week before the pandemic forced schools to close.
Ten days later, she started feeling ill, with shortness of breath and a fever, and she tested positive for COVID-19. But the symptom that has persisted is feeling out of breath.
I started having these dreams of suffocating or drowning, Paulsen said. It got to the point where I was wondering if I was going to be able to take my next breath.
Doctors gave her medications and instructed her to frequently use a nebulizer, a machine that helps people traditionally with asthma or COPD with their breathing. But symptoms persisted and she also started getting pains in her chest. At Maine Medical Center, they gave her more tests, and discovered blood clots on her lungs, which is one of the COVID-19 complications in some patients.
Paulsen said she took blood thinners, and the clots cleared, but shes still feeling weak and often out-of-breath.
I have pretty severe scarring on my lungs from the virus, said Paulsen, of Cumberland County. It might not ever go away.
Paulsen said she used to be physically active biking and swimming but now a walk around the block is exhausting. Paulsen said she doesnt know if her health will ever return to before she got COVID-19. And she still wears a mask and socially distances, because its not known how long immunity lasts. It bothers her to see people not wearing masks and crowding next to each other.
People really need to know this is not a hoax, Paulsen said. Please do not be any less careful. Please wear masks.
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ROME The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care beds in Italy has been rising in the past few weeks.
On Sunday, 86 persons infected with the coronavirus occupied ICU beds, compared to 38 in late July, as returning vacationers drive up Italys numbers of day-to-day new caseloads as well as hospitalizations.
Italy registered 1,365 new infections since Saturday, according to Health Ministry figures. Still, those numbers are low when compared to the daily bulletin early in the pandemic, when thousands of Italians each day were testing positive for COVID-19, and a few thousand were needing intensive care, overwhelming hospital staff.
Italy counts 268,218 confirmed infections and 35,477 known deaths, including four in the last 24 hours. After months in which the heaviest concentration of cases occurred in northern Italy, lately many southern regions are seeing sharply rising numbers. On Sunday, Campania, the region which includes the southern metropolis of Naples, had the most new cases in Italy 270.
ISLAMABAD Pakistani authorities have reported 264 new COVID-19 cases, the countrys lowest daily count for the new coronavirus in more than four months.
In a statement Sunday, the national command and control center said only four people died from the new virus in the previous 24 hours, taking overall COVID-19 deaths to 6,288 since the start of the outbreak in February.
