Israeli Study Finds Half of Recovered COVID-19 Patients Suffer Continued Respiratory Issues

TEL AVIV — More than half of COVID-19 patients displayed symptoms of respiratory distress even several weeks after recovery, a new study by Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center has found.

The study, based on data from a few dozen recovered patients, found no difference between mild, moderate or serious cases three months post-recovery.

According to Prof. Gabriel Izbicki, director of the hospital’s pulmonary institute, the results of the study are “very frightening.”

“But we are looking to have a few hundred patients and then we will see if our research is confirmed or not,” he told The Jerusalem Post.

“Within the symptoms that we checked for, we revealed general weakness among the majority of patients alongside shortness of breath, sustained cough and other complex breathing and pulmonary issues,” said Izbicki.

“The majority of patients are not back to the level and shape they were in before their hospitalization,” he added.

According to Izbicki, the international medical community was mostly focused on treating severely sick patients or on developing vaccines and that such research could “help the entire coronavirus community worldwide.”

Israel has seen 400-500 new confirmed coronavirus cases per day in the past few days, closing in on averages not seen since the peak of the epidemic in early April.

The head of the Israel Society for Infectious Diseases on Sunday warned the director-general of the Health Ministry the country was on the verge of “losing control” of the pandemic and that it was “getting to the point of no return.”

“Over the past two weeks, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of daily infections of the coronavirus. In recent days there has also been a rise in the ages of those diagnosed and hospitalized,” Miri Weinberger wrote to the newly appointed Health Ministry director-general, Chezy Levy.

A total of 23,497 people have been diagnosed with the virus and there are currently 6,160 active cases, the Health Ministry said. The rate of infections to number of tests performed is at an all-time high of four percent.