VIDEO: 'Lessons learned' from personal breakthrough COVID-19 infection
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In this Healio Rheumatology Video Perspective, Leonard Calabrese, DO, shares his personal experience with a breakthrough COVID-19 infection, offering sage advice for clinicians who encounter COVID in their daily lives as well as their daily practice.
“We, as clinicians, don’t do a very good job of taking care of ourselves,” Calabrese said. “I made a series of blunders of meta-cognition in interpreting my own symptoms.”
“What did I learn from this, other than you make bad decisions regarding your own health care?” he added. “First of all, Delta breakthrough is real. Secondly, after examining the data, it is now clear that the phenotype of breakthrough infection in fully vaccinated people is much different. The UK’s Zoe study, which tracks symptoms, suggests that breakthrough infection is not a flu-like illness like de novo COVID; [instead] it’s sniffles, scratchy throat, sneezing, headache.”
* For additional insights on the dangers of breakthrough infection with the delta variant, check out Dr. Calabrese's editorial in the September issue of Healio Rheumatology.