One year after coming down with what she initially thought was nothing more than a cold, Susie Goulding says she is still experiencing the debilitating effects of COVID-19.
The Oakville resident, who is among a group of people commonly referred to as COVID-19 long-haulers, says she became infected with the novel coronavirus in March of last year.
“I fell ill with a sore throat,” she told CP24 on Thursday morning. “About four days into it, a bizarre barrage of symptoms started showing up, one after the other.”
She said some of those symptoms, which include ear, nose and throat issues and gastro-intestinal problems, persist to this day.
Goulding, who said she was a healthy, active person prior to the infection, noted that it was heart issues in June that ultimately landed her in the hospital, about three months after first testing positive for the virus.
“I found out (at the hospital) that I tested negative for COVID, which left me really curious,” she said. “At that time I realized that there really was not a lot of information out there in the medical community.”
What is now known about the deadly virus has substantially evolved since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic exactly one year ago today. Cough, shortness of breath, and fever were initially identified as the only symptoms of the virus but a lengthy list of ailments have now been added.
Over the past year, public health advice has also shifted.
At the start of the pandemic, masking, which is now a widely accepted part of everyday life, was not being encouraged by top public health officials in province, country, or around the world. A year ago, provincial health officials had not yet publicly recognized widespread community transmission of the virus, suggesting instead that cases were exclusively linked to travel and close contacts of people who had travelled internationally.
“We were in evolution and it was a very strange time and it was a period of tremendous uncertainty for all of us, not just for the general community, but people in the medical and scientific community as well,” Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto General Hospital, told CP24 on Thursday.
Bogoch said when WHO declared the novel coronavirus a global pandemic, he was in the Ivory Coast working on non-COVID related public health initiatives.
“I was watching the news so carefully because this was sweeping through parts of the world. It had landed in North America at the time and this was around the time the Prime Minister was talking about possibly closing borders down,” he said.
“I was scrambling to figure out how I was going to get home and if my flights were still going to be on.”
He said in the short time since he had left, things looked very different in Canada when he arrived back home.
“The tone and the country had changed significantly in that short period of time that I was away and everything was just in that process of closing down,” he said.
“It was a very unnerving few weeks there and of course it has been a very challenging year to say the least.”
Dr. Jerome Leis, the Medical Director of Infection Prevention & Control at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, told CP24 on Thursday that teams at his hospital had been keeping a careful eye on how the virus was circulating months before the pandemic was declared.
“From December 2019 onward, we were tracking this outbreak, quite concerned that it was just a flight away from coming to Canada so we were prepared for the first case,” he said.
On Jan. 25, 2020, Canada’s first case of COVID-19 was confirmed at Sunnybrook but significant travel restrictions weren’t announced by the federal government until nearly two months later.
“I think it was probably by February, sometime in February, that we were pretty convinced that we were going toward a pandemic,” Leis said.
“From January onward we were working around the clock, all of our teams, to prepare for that possibility.”
Over the past year, Ontario has recorded more than 300,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 7,100 virus-related deaths.
The Government of Canada has designated March 11 as a national day of observance to honour those who have died from the virus.
In a tweet, Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott asked residents of the province to remember those who have lost their lives to COVID-19 and thanked health-care workers for their “heroic sacrifices and tireless efforts.”
“Their compassion and determination is unwavering,” she said. “In a year unlike any other, Ontarians have come together to support each other and have shown the world that the Ontario Spirit endures. As we continue to make great strides in administering vaccines, know that there are better days ahead.”
Today, Ontario hit a vaccination milestone, administering one million COVID-19 vaccine doses provincewide.
While the province still has a long road ahead to vaccinate its 14 million residents, Leis said that light at the end of the tunnel has provided health-care workers with hope.
“Burnout is a challenge within health care,” he said.
“For me, the move toward vaccination has sort of rejuvenated me and given me more energy. I think this is the path forward that is allowing us to really go on offense against this virus and I am very hopeful that it's going to make a tremendous difference.”
He urged people to get inoculated at the first opportunity.
“We need to really aim to get herd immunity into our population,” he said. “It is our opportunity to really move beyond this.”
