It’s clear just how devastating Covid-19 is on the elderly but the young are also at risk of becoming very ill.
One Kiwi woman is still recovering almost a month after being confirmed as being infected and she wants to warn others.
Alice Banfield is on day 29 of her diagnosis and can’t be declared recovered from Covid-19 until she is free of symptoms.
The 32-year-old started experiencing symptoms about five days after travelling to New Zealand from overseas, the day she was tested.
She was confirmed to have the virus the very next day and health authorities believe she picked it up while on her way home from Israel either in a plane or in transit.
“How I felt on the third day was so weak, I have never felt that weak in my life,” she told 1 NEWS.
Soon she was wracked with sweats, chills, coughing and exhaustion.
“Ah what else? Loss of taste, bit of loss of appetite, just total tiredness, upset stomach and shortness of breath,” she says.
“The shortness of breath is just terrifying, it was really scary never having experienced that before.”
But it wan’t bad enough for hospital - her case considered ‘mild’.
“I was still finding it harder than normal to breathe and it just made me think about people who would be in a much more vulnerable position,” Ms Banfield says.
A Healthline nurse has checked in on her every day since her diagnosis, and she says she is starting to feel a bit better but hasn’t rid herself of the virus yet.
“Don’t underestimate it. Yeah, it’s really, really a rough virus,” she says.
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