Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) -- There are many people who have been told by their doctors that their disease as a result of infection with Covid-19 is "mild", amid the outbreak of the rapidly spreading "Omicron" mutant wave, yet, what it feels like Symptoms are not mild enough, as some describe.
The symptoms of COVID-19 can vary greatly from person to person. Studies have shown that the disease caused by the Omicron variant is generally milder than that caused by the Delta variant, so that some people may not experience symptoms or limit themselves to a runny nose. However, it can cause severe disease, especially among the unvaccinated.
According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, there are 126,410 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19, nearly 89% of the number recorded at peak time last year.
But even a disease considered "mild" can be unpleasant, and the recovery from it is long.
The National Institutes of Health's definition of "mild" COVID-19 includes symptoms that everyone is familiar with these days, such as fever, cough, sore throat, and fatigue.
Dr. Shira Doron, an epidemiologist and infectious disease physician at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, USA, explains that the use of the word "moderate" is not intended to diminish your experience with the disease.
Even people with mild illness can develop so-called long-term COVID-19, with symptoms lasting six months or longer.
Doron believes that the term "moderate" favored by experts may need to be redefined.
Doron explains that when doctors or the Centers for Disease Control or the National Institutes of Health use the term “mild,” what they really mean is that you won’t get so sick that you need to be hospitalized, “but when you get flu-like symptoms that make you bedridden, This is not a minor injury to you."
For example, Dave Gooday was shocked when his routine test came back positive on December 8 of last year. The radio and voice coach at Arizona High School makes sure he gets tested weekly for COVID-19 and wears a mask because he doesn't want to bring the disease to his wife, who has lupus. "They told me that if I get Covid, it means that anyone is exposed, so I am very careful," Juday noted.
Goday sees the vaccines and boosters working, as he never had to be hospitalized with COVID-19, but suffered from a minor headache that later turned into what seemed to be one of the worst sinus headaches he had ever experienced.
"My head felt like a 7-kilogram bowling ball, and my sense of smell and taste were fading away," Godai said.
If you have a "moderate" illness from COVID, you wouldn't go to the emergency room, especially at a time when health care resources are becoming scarce.
However, describing the disease as “mild” may have another effect, as it may lead some people not to take COVID-19 seriously enough.
"There's been so much stress from COVID-19, and it's related to the desire to get back to normal, that people may downplay their symptoms and choose not to get tested for COVID," said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious disease at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. -19 or the flu.Schaffner stressed that even with mild symptoms, people should undergo a Covid-19 test, so that they can monitor the worsening of symptoms that need medical attention.
And he added that the result of the Covid-19 test result tells the patient that he needs to self-isolate for a longer time so that he does not transmit the infection to others.
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Although the Omicron mutant causes more "moderate" disease than the previous variants, people should not use this as an excuse and abandon vaccinations or booster doses.
"People are still being hospitalized for Omicron, and the vast majority of them are still unvaccinated," Schaffner said, adding that "the hospital is not a luxury hotel."
Dr. Claudia Hoen, director of pediatric disease control at Rainbow Infants and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, encourages everyone she knows to get the vaccine and booster dose.
Huen pointed out that hospitals help people with Covid-19, but symptoms and complications may persist for a long time after hospitalization.
"We see data that sometimes, up to 30% of patients who end up in the intensive care unit, never get back to normal," Hoen said.
She added that the unvaccinated may think that someone will save them and everything will be fine, but the truth is that most patients do not return to their normal lives.