Introduction
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that infect the respiratory tract in humans (1). Covid-19 is the last identified member of this family. Coronaviruses (CoV) are the viruses that can cause self-limiting mild infection tables such as the common cold or more serious infection tables, such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) (2). In Wuhan, China, cases with pneumonia of unknown etiology began to be reported as of December 31, 2019,
The (2019-nCoV) from coronavirus family that had not previously been detected in humans was defined as the causative virus for the existing cases (3). Later name of 2019-nCoV disease was adopted as COVID-19 and also named SARS-CoV-2 due to the virus’ close similarity to SARS CoV (4). The covid-19 outbreak began in China and affected the entire world. Considering the number of infections worldwide and the mortality rate associated with it, The Covid-19 outbreak has now been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (5). 83.143.254 patients infected with Covid-19 and 1,813,583 deaths had been reported worldwide as of 31.12.2020 (6).
The disease is mainly transmitted by droplets. Also, it is transmitted by touching the droplets emitted by an infected person through coughing and sneezing by other people and then touching the mouth, nose or eye mucosa. Since viruses can be detected in respiratory tract secretions of asymptomatic people, these people may be contagious. When the epidemiological characteristics of the cases in China were examined, it was observed that the average incubation period was 5-6 days (2-14 days), in some cases it could extend up to 14 days (7).
In addition to respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, dyspnea, which are common symptoms of infection, new symptoms such as loss of sense of smell and taste, diarrhea may be seen. Although the infection recovers, some people may continue to cough or have a loss or change in taste or sense of smell for several weeks. In more serious cases, pneumonia, severe acute respiratory infection, kidney failure and even death may develop. While the mortality rate was 11% in the SARS outbreak and 35-50% in MERS-CoV, the mortality rate of COVID-19 was reported as 3.2% (2).
Studies so far have mostly focused on the initial symptoms of the disease. The aim of this study is to investigate how long covid-19 symptoms persist after treatment and examine the need to create a follow-up algorithm for these symptoms.