So you’ve come down with symptoms of the coronavirus, now what do you do? Doctors say there’s an easy treatment plan for most cases that’ll get you feeling better soon.
Dr. Miriam Louis is a Pulmonologist at UF Health. She says treatment for patients with COVID-19 is just like if you have the flu.
“For the majority of patients, we think about 80 percent, treatment is to stay at home, self-quarantine,” she said.
Even if you start to feel better, CDC guidelines say for patients with mild cases, they must have no symptoms for 3 days without the help of fever-reducing medications and must wait an additional week symptom-free since first getting sick before coming out of isolation.
But everyone is different and, “the recovery depends obviously on how sick you were, to begin with,” Louis said.
If you originally tested positive for COVID-19, CDC guidelines say patients must have two consecutive negative tests to be officially cleared of the virus.
You can find more information about at-home isolation guidelines here.
In the US, there are more than 86,000 confirmed cases of the virus. More than 700 people have recovered that doctors know of. They hope that number will increase as new treatments are currently being tested to combat symptoms.
Most patients have mild to moderate symptoms, and in rare cases, symptoms will be severe. But Dr. Louis says the majority of patients will make a full recovery.