How Corona Virus Effects Lungs?

In most of the cases, COVID-19 starts and ends in lungs, because like the flu, corona-virus is a respiratory disease.

The virus spreads typically when an infected person coughs or sneezes, the spraying droplets spreads the virus to anyone in close contact. Corona viruses also lead to flu-like symptoms: Patients might start out with a cough and fever that gain to pneumonia or ill.

After the SARS outbreak, the WHO stated that the disease usually attacks the lungs in three phases:  immune hyper-reactivity, viral replication and pulmonary destruction.

Not all patients went over all three phases— in fact only 25% of SARS patients suffered respiratory failure, the defining indication of severe cases.

In the early days of an infection, the novel coronavirus (Infectious Disease) rapidly infects human lung cells. Those lung cells come in two classes: one is mucus and the other is hair-like batons called cilia.

SARS like to infect and kill cilia cells, which then afford off and fill patient’s airways with fluids and debris, and it has been speculated that the same is happening with the novel coronavirus. That is because the earliest studies on COVID-19 have shown that many patients develop pneumonia in both lungs, led by symptoms like shortness of breath.

That’s when second phase and the immune system kicks in. Excited by the presence of a viral attacker, our bodies step up to fight the disease by inundation the lungs with immune cells to clear away the damage and repair the lung tissue.

When working properly, this inflammatory process is tightly controlled and enclosed only to infected areas. But sometimes your immune system goes broken and those cells kill anything in their way, including your healthy tissues.

During the third phase, lung damage persists to build—which can result in respiratory failure. Even if death doesn’t occur, some patients suffered with permanent lung damage. According to the WHO, SARS perforated holes in the lungs; giving them “a honeycomb-like appearance”—and these injuries are present in those afflicted by novel coronavirus, too.

These holes are likely build by the immune system’s hyperactive response, which constitute scars that both protect and stiffen the lungs.

When that occurs, patients generally have to be put on ventilators to assist their breathing. At the same time, inflammation also makes the membranes between the air sacs and blood vessels more penetrable, which can fill the lungs with fluid and affect their capability to oxygenate blood.

“In serious cases, you mostly flood your lungs and you can’t breathe, “That’s how people are dying.”

This can be controlled by taking necessary preventive measures.

Nothing is more important than our health.

Be healthy, Stay healthy.