Before joining the staff of the Enterprise-Journal last May, Gabriel Perry attended Beloit College in Wisconsin with the two coronavirus patients featured in this article. They asked not to be identified.
News of the spread of COVID-19, the novel form of coronavirus that’s quickly permeated the globe and was classified as a bona fide pandemic Wednesday by the World Health Organization, has saturated print and television coverage for the past few weeks.
But what is it actually like to test positive for the virus and experience its symptoms?
A woman in her 20s from Milwaukee studying abroad in London was exposed to the virus while on vacation in northern Italy just days before that country went into lockdown. She spent nearly two weeks under quarantine and will return to the U.S. on Monday.
She traveled to Milan while on break from studying at Goldsmiths, University of London, with another U.S. student Feb. 20 and stayed for five days, enjoying an exciting getaway in a city famous around the world for its luxury art, fashion and lifestyle.
“All of this feels like a fever dream, that I actually got the virus,” she said.
The other student, an Appleton, Wis., man in his 20s, started feeling bad toward the end of their stay and developed a high fever the day after they returned to England. He was sent to a health care facility three days later after his condition had improved considerably, and soon tested positive.
He said he felt sick after returning from Italy but had made a near-complete recovery by time he was tested for the virus by National Health Service doctors. After testing positive, he said his main lingering symptom was a runny nose and a bout of insomnia.
While testing was supposed to take about 72 hours, the man said tests were routinely taking up to five days because healthcare facilities were backed up.
The man recovered relatively quickly, but said he was more concerned about chest pain the other student was experiencing. He expressed his optimism that her condition was rapidly improving but still felt worried about the potential of her developing pneumonia.
“They’re overwhelmed,” he said. “Day to day we basically wait for people to bring us food and then get retested.”
He said the pair were missing a lot of school while under quarantine at her London campus apartment.
“We just want to come home at this point,” he said at the beginning of their time in quarantine.
The woman started to experience symptoms three days later and became increasingly ill. She said she was having difficulty breathing and running a high fever, so she called for an ambulance, which arrived about five hours later.
“My fever was so bad one day after I got back,” she said. “I’d seen the reports about all of the cases in Italy.”
Her family encouraged her to seek medical attention because her sister had a case of pneumonia in the past and described similar symptoms.
“For me, it was trau-matic,” she said. “When black women go to the doctor they’re sometimes written off as being dramatic, so I was worried and panicking in the ambulance about that.”
She said she was shocked and scared because of stories and experiences of other black women in health care facilities where they either received inadequate treatment or ended up dying as a result of their care. She said that aspect of the testing and quarantine phase was the most frightening part.
Workers with the ambulance crew wore haz-mat suits and would not engage with her to limit physical contact. She said she was transported to a London hospital where she was tested but not treated, despite suffering from a high fever, body aches and severe lung and chest pain.
Doctors in England told her they suspected she and the other U.S. student were exposed to the virus while traveling through the airport in Milan.
She said the testing and quarantine process in England was not productive, with doctors calling several times over their period of confinement to ask about their symptoms but not doing much else. But the U.S. Embassy and her U.S. college contacted the students while under quarantine. She said among younger people, testing happens too slowly and those individuals are already over the illness by the time they test positive.
She’s looking forward to returning to the U.S., even though that means she’s ending her study abroad program slightly early. She said she’s excited for a break and return to her studies stateside next fall.
“I am so ready to come home,” she said. “I’m gonna hug my mommy.”
She said while she’s relieved to have made it through without complications, the experience was a bad one and she hopes people will pay attention to community health in order to protect vulnerable members of the population.
“If you’re healthy and young, it’s like a bad cold and you’ll probably be fine. The real concern is people can give it to people who are more vulnerable,” she said. “The fear shouldn’t be dying — it should be killing someone else.”
