The second wave of coronavirus is creating havoc in the country, especially in the North of England and Scotland, as the Prime Minister announced a three-tier lockdown system across the nation on Monday.
Officials have warned that the rate at which the coronavirus is now spreading is faster than it was in the summer. Scientists say that colder temperatures, less sunlight and perhaps more rain in the North and Scotland may be responsible for them to suffer from a worse hit. But others have blamed dense population in the North, multi-generational families and poorer household where people cannot afford to work from home and return of almost 60,000 students to the universities as the main reasons behind this spike.
As fear grips people about the increasing new cases of infections and its incapacitating effects, there are some already struggling with symptoms and bitter memories since their first encounter with the deadly Covid-19.
The condition is commonly known as ‘Long Covid’ and it is having devastating consequences on people's lives. They still suffer from chronic fatigue, persistent pains and coughs, breathlessness for months, ‘brain fog’, anxiety and stress, even after six months of returning home. For some like 45-year-old Roweena Russell, from North Shields, Tyne and Wear, it has even changed the shape of her hands.
Estimates suggest that 10% of Covid patients may still be experiencing symptoms more than three weeks after infection, and perhaps 60,000 people could be suffering from Long Covid symptoms after more than three months. The head of NHS on 7 October announced that people who are suffering from Long Covid symptoms will be offered specialist help at clinics across England. Sir Simon Stevens also promised £10 million to be invested this year in additional local funding to help kick start and designate Long Covid clinics in every area across England, to complement existing primary, community and rehabilitation care.
But so far in reality, the focus has been on saving lives of Covid patients. As the attention shifts to new patients and a steady increase of cases in the UK, the ones who are suffering from Long Covid think that they will now have to live with these symptoms for a lifetime, unable to go back to work full-time with mounting financial pressures.
Ash Balakrishnan: “You better start believing in God”
Ash Balakrishnan, a 38-year-old entrepreneur from London was a relatively fit man, who went to gym at least thrice a week and did not smoke or drink much. Though mildly asthmatic, a relatively active man, he thought coronavirus could not ever touch him. But he was proved very wrong. “I went about my life normally, going to meetings in London, and a month after I came back from my trip to India, I fell ill. I kept checking the BBC website for coronavirus symptoms, but I never had a cough, so I thought it was just a normal cold. I was advised to be on self-isolation when the paramedics visited me for the first time, but then after a few days of that visit, I struggled to breathe. So, I called an ambulance and I was taken in,” Ash told Asian Voice.
“I was in hospital for five-weeks,” he added. “I developed bedsores (pressure ulcers) under my heels, possibly from being in the same position in a hospital bed for long. 6 months since then, these wounds have still not healed. I go to hospital twice a week now, to get my wounds cleaned and dressing changed, but the skin is taking a very long to grow back. As a result, I cannot walk long distance like I used to.”
When Ash came home from the hospital, he was surrounded by loved ones and he did not want to think about his lonely and traumatic experience at the hospital. But when his daughter went back to school in September and his wife returned to work, slowly life regained normalcy and he got a chance to reflect on his near-death experience. “It’s a scary experience, you know. I think there was a point the doctors thought I was not going to make it. But I am very fortunate to be alive today. But sometimes when I stop and think about it, and when I go back to the Croydon University Hospital to get my wounds cleaned or blood drawn, it brings back sad memories.”
When he was initially admitted in the hospital and got tested positive, no one confirmed that he had Covid-19. The doctors told Ash that he would be put to sleep to help him with his breathing, but he woke up three weeks later! “I thought I would be knocked out for 24 hours,” he said with a chuckle. “But I woke up three weeks later. While I was in coma, I had these vivid dreams of me dying and going to temples, churches, mosques, gurudwaras praying for my life. I saw my funeral; I even saw speeches at my funeral- it was almost like a peek to the future- if it went the other way!
“So, when I came out of my coma on Easter Sunday, and heard about all those prayers and best wishes from friends and family, I felt strangely connected, as if I have been to all these holy places through their prayers. Even the doctors told me, ‘We thought we have lost you. So, if you do not believe in God, you probably want to start believing in Him now’.”
Ash is currently working part-time from home, but when he first arrived back from the hospital, he had lost 15 kgs and could not walk or climb stairs by himself. “All that has passed now. I used to do high intensity one-hour circuit training before I had coronavirus. I even played football. But on the other day to hospital, I ran to catch a bus. Probably ran for no more than 10 seconds and I was gasping for breath. It will perhaps take time to rebuild my stamina and I am taking it slow.”
Ash is undergoing a battery of tests, as he gradually recovers. Since the number of Covid cases are low in his hospital, he is still expected to visit every week. “I am not immune to coronavirus and I know that. But the hospital is happy for me to go in at the moment. If the number of cases increase in the future, then I have to start doing the dressing myself at home.”
Sohail Anjum: “Even in my coma, I knew something had happened to my mum”
Sohail Anjum, a 47-year-old photographer who lives down the road from Ash, was greeted with applauds as he left the hospital. Sohail lived in Dubai for six years and moved back to the UK to spend time with his 81-year-old mum and 85-year-old dad.
Sohail suffered from coronavirus and was in a coma for a month. As he gradually recovers, planning a phased return to work, he still has a wheezing cough, which has been there in him since leaving the hospital. “I get short of breath even after daily exercise. I suffer from fatigue and muscular pains. But my doctors said that my body is going to take twice as much as time to recover- which could be from six months to one year,” Sohail told the newsweekly, as he continues his once a week exercise in the post-Covid rehab.
He was in fact admitted at the same time and in the same intensive care as Ash, in the bed opposite him.
In the beginning of March, Sohail started getting migraine and a bit of an itchy throat. There was no lockdown in place at that point, “One day at work, my colleague said I did not look too well and asked me to go home. I then saw a tweet from Idris Elba, that he got tested for coronavirus, and I thought to myself, ‘how did he get tested, when I could not even get through NHS hotline!’”
He then rang the GP service and the doctor dismissed it as a nasal viral infection. By the weekend, Sohail’s fever went up. GP still dismissed it as flu. He then went through NHS website and was asked to call 111. They asked him to take paracetamol and self-isolate and asked to call 999 and yet again dismissed it as a flu like virus. As his shortness of breath grew, Sohail called the GP who asked him to wait till the weekend and go to A&E if he did not feel better. So Sohail rang up his brother and requested to take him to the A&E. “I registered and when they did my oxygen level reading, they straight sent me into a room.”
The next evening, he had a visit from the ITU surgeon and the team, who told him that he would be put to medically induced sleep (coma). “I had put my faith in their hands. It’s like an operation when they put you to sleep and you wake up two hours later. Only in my case, I woke up a month later! But when I woke up, I sensed something did not feel right. I felt that my mum has passed away and I was frantically looking for my phone.”
A few days after Sohail was put on induced coma, Sohail’s mother Rashida Begum Mohammad was admitted in the hospital feeling poorly and with shortness of breath. On 30 March, 2 days after being admitted in the hospital, she passed away. “She knew I was sick,” said Sohail with a sadness in his tone. “And she passed away worrying about me. When I was in the ITU, my vitals were not so good. I even got septicaemia and my oxygen requirement was 80%. When my mum passed away my vitals started improving and the doctors took me off the ventilator. It was my mum’s prayers that pulled me through!”
Since Sohail has been on an induced coma for a month, the consultants have asked him to build on his strength first. “Even being at home, I have to get used to not seeing mum around or hearing her voice,” he added.
Speaking about the complications of Long Covid especially for patients with pre-existing illnesses, Dr Umesh Prabhu said, “It is very rare for patients to be re-infected with coronavirus. If the patient’s lungs or heart have been infected, patients can have chronic symptoms and that is long coronavirus. The virus has left them and the patients won’t infect anyone around them. But if they are suffering from other existing illnesses such as cancer, or have transplant surgeries scheduled then the Long Covid is likely to worsen their conditions. We cannot operate on these patients until they fully recover. And we don’t know how long they will take to recover but usually the Long Covid-19 can last upto six months
“We know that only 13% of the population in this country is from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. But 38% of patients admitted due to coronavirus are from BAME backgrounds and naturally some would have long-term effects of Covid-19."
To see Sohail’s journey through Covid: https://vimeo.com/425127651
