PHOENIX — “Oh, it was bad, man, especially at the beginning," David Harris said.
Harris had COVID-19 a month ago and is still on oxygen.
He said he's still so weak he can't walk and has to carry the oxygen everywhere he goes, even long after he's officially "recovered" from the virus.
He finally managed to make it outside this week.
“I was on heart medicine and other stuff," Harris said. "They did an EKG and everything looks really really good.”
But the evidence is starting to mount that the coronavirus could be causing damage to patients' heart muscles, causing a condition called myocarditis.
Cardiologist Dr. Martha Gulati says myocarditis, a viral infection of the heart, is showing up in more and more COVID patients, even those who never show symptoms.
"There still might be some cardiac involvement," Gulati said, "and we are hearing about this now.”
Myocarditis basically scars the heart muscle and can cause it to weaken.
Gulati said we might see an uptick in heart disease, and even transplants, years after the pandemic is over.
“In addition to the usual causes heart failure we will be asking, 'did you have the COVID virus?” she said.
Myocarditis was cited as one of the reasons the Big Ten and the Pac-12 canceled their football seasons.
But as with most things coronavirus, doctors are still learning about the effects, which means they really don’t know how bad the virus could be.
