Managing with symptoms of Covid at home

This page covers experiences of people who contracted Covid and were later admitted to an Intensive Care Unit. On this page you can listen to people talk about:

  • Making sense of their symptoms
  • Having no symptoms
  • The use of an oximeter to measure oxygen levels
  • Having to go into self-isolation

Making sense of symptoms

At the start of the pandemic, the UK government’s public health messaging communicated a list of symptoms of Covid (Covid-19) that people should look out for. In the first few weeks these symptoms were:

  • a new, continuous cough,
  • a high temperature or fever.

The loss or change to one’s sense of taste or smell was added in May 2020.

Many of those we interviewed described to us how their illness started with one or more of these symptoms and a “general feeling of being really unwell”, followed by more severe “flu like” symptoms. Lots of the people we interviewed experienced difficulty breathing which made them extremely anxious.

John had flu-like symptoms which gradually got worse.

I remember initially it was quite mild symptoms, the first couple of days. Temperature, just feeling…it's like a flu scenario, your body was just aching and you just didn't want to move or do anything. Loss of appetite. A little cough, not much of a cough. I never lost my sense of taste or smell. So I didn't have all the symptoms which you hear about. And then over the…about day three, four, I then started having difficulty with breathing, so respiratory issues, which is what led to me needing to get myself into hospital at the point where I was really struggling to be able to just breathe. So I'd describe it as a severe case of flu like symptoms.

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As the Covid pandemic continued, more symptoms were added to the list. Many of the people we spoke to had symptoms that were not those communicated via the public health messaging, including:

  • fatigue,
  • muscle aches,
  • a sore throat,
  • poor appetite,
  • drowsiness,
  • headache,
  • delirium,
  • collapsing or fainting,
  • an upset stomach or diarrhoea,
  • mood changes,
  • and feeling sick.

To many, it was confusing that Covid symptoms were more diverse than those communicated through government channels, particularly when self-testing to confirm or rule out Covid was not yet available.

Kate and her husband did not recognise their symptoms as signs of a Covid infection.

I was working at home… because we had been locked down, He was [working but] not exposed to the public. Both him and I started feeling unwell, kind of coughing, whatever, and at that point there was no testing, and actually it was fairly early on in the process, in the lockdown, so there wasn’t any testing. Actually, it was at the point where they were talking about the loss of taste and smell but hadn’t adopted that into the set of symptoms. So, the only symptoms that we were told to look out for at that point, were sort of a high temperature, pyrexia, and this persistent cough.

So, both of us were kind of, we had this cough, but it wasn’t persistent, it was almost like a hay fevery cough, so neither of us kind of recognised that it was what we thought it was, because actually it wasn’t classically presenting.

I started to feel [unwell], he then had no symptoms, his coughing stopped, I started to feel kind of unwell, and I took to my bed. Still no sort of temperature or anything like that, not a classical clinical presentation. So, we kind of assumed that that’s what it might be, and it was over the Easter Weekend, so he wasn’t working anyway. So, I took to my bed, and he was fine. By the Saturday, I was alright, I was back up and running, which is kind of typical for me, if I’m unwell anyway, I get sick, and then I’m fine after a couple of days. But, by the Saturday, he then started feeling unwell, again no temperature.

So, on the Saturday I was fine, I mowed the lawn on Saturday, and he went to bed. And he was quite kind of unwell, but a bit non-descript really, there wasn’t a cough, there wasn’t a temperature, he just felt a bit achy, a bit rubbish.

And your symptoms, they were rather diffused, you say, so they weren’t the ones that you were [seeing in the public health messages] …?

They were diffuse. No, so the only classic symptom I had was, I didn’t even, I had a cough, but it wasn’t a persistent cough. And I only had it for about 24 hours, and it was like I get when I get hay fever, it was exactly the same, so that’s what I wrote it off as. I worked all the way through when I had that cough on the Saturday, working at home. I wasn’t pyrexial with a fever, I didn’t have the aches and pains, I didn’t have any of that. And the only symptom that was concrete, but then at that point hadn’t been developed, was when I lost my sense of taste and smell, and I found that really distressing, that I couldn’t taste and smell. That was weird. I took bites out of onions, just so that, because I was like, I don’t believe that I can’t taste. And I couldn’t taste it. Yeah, that was really distressing. Funny isn’t it, how you remember that? [name husband] didn’t lose his taste or smell at all. Funny.

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Some people we spoke to had hardly any symptoms at all. Zoe found this hard to accept with her later hospital admission and how ill she became.

Zoe woke up in resus after experiencing a tightness in her chest earlier that night.

I didn’t have any symptoms apart from, I think I explained to you that when I went just to the loo, in the middle of the night, I had a little bit of tightness in my chest, which was a bit unusual for me, but not anything that I thought, oh, like, anything dramatic. So, the fact that I would find myself waking up in Resus was just such a shock. I just, I didn’t, all the things they tell you to look out for, I know my temperature was high, I think I told you that already, from the notes the paramedics had, but if you’d asked me on that day if I’d felt okay, I would have definitely told you, yes, I felt fine. So, when they say, kind of, you know, continuous cough, high temperature, you know, all the things that they tell you to look out for, I didn’t feel like any of those applied to me, apart from that little bit of tightness to my chest.

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Looking back, some people worried that they should have called for help earlier. Carl recalled that he felt he would just get better as his health had otherwise been really good. However, his symptoms continued to worsen. He was very unsure what to do as there was essentially no information available on what to do, and it was impossible to get through to 111 to get advice. Looking back, he wondered whether he could have prevented his critical illness had he gone to hospital sooner: “I actually do feel I should have gone to hospital, if I’d have gone in on the Wednesday or Thursday, I probably wouldn’t have needed the ventilator, but I probably waited too long.”

Carl felt that he may not have needed the ventilator had he gone to hospital sooner.

I kind of knew it was serious. When I got into the ambulance, I tried to not stress, because I’d got my wife and my two boys there, they’re 13 and 15. And because in a fortunate way they didn’t really know much about it because it was only really the very start of it. Loads and loads of people were very worried, but I knew it was risky and I knew when I got in the ambulance this might be it, I knew that. But in the back of my mind, I was telling myself I’ll be okay, I’m going to be okay.

I actually do feel I should have gone to hospital, if I’d have gone in on the Wednesday or Thursday, I probably wouldn’t have needed the ventilator, but I probably waited too long. When I look at other people, I sometimes think that’s what other people have done, they’ve just left it too long. But it’s really difficult because everybody has a different threshold of where they are uncomfortable or pain threshold, and some people just hold out forever. But I just knew when my temperature was high, I would just collapse.

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In some households, more than one person was ill at the same time. In some cases, more than one family member went on to require hospital admission (see ‘When more than one person is ill’).

Measuring oxygen levels

Covid-19 is a viral infection that can affect people’s breathing. Several people told us that when they or their loved one were breathless, they had been advised by friends or family to use an oximeter (a device to measure blood oxygen levels) to monitor their condition. Some people we spoke to found this device very helpful, and went on to recommend it to others. Donna felt having an oximeter would have helped her to realise the severity of her husband’s condition and to seek medical help earlier.

A friend of Alisha’s father recommended the use of an oximeter.

But it was like one day went, two days went and he’s not getting better. The problem was he was having a very high fever of 39 degrees and it was just not going down. Me and my mum were doing cold sponging on him, we were giving him all the home remedies, everything you can do, take some steam, try to clear the airways, maybe that would help. He wasn’t really having any breathing problems even as such. He wasn’t even coughing. The majority of the symptoms that you would associate with Covid he wasn’t really having, and that’s why we weren’t thinking that it would be so serious.

But eventually then, and I think this is quite lucky, one of his friends is a doctor and he actually called to check up how my dad was, and he said to my dad, you need to get an oximeter, we need to check your oxygen saturations. We ordered one straight away and the next day we checked, and it was quite low. It was about 87. At that time, I think everyone was still learning about Covid, even though this was in December, January, there was still a lot that we hadn’t learned about Covid. The government didn’t tell us you should get an oximeter, you should use an oximeter if you’ve got Covid. We didn’t know that. It’s only luckily that my dad’s friend told us this, it’s something that’s very important for you to have if you have Covid. So, we monitored his oxygen levels for a while. I would say probably just one or two days really. It was low. It was 87, so we called 111, and they said, yeah, that’s quite low, but it’s quite normal for Covid patients to have oxygen saturations of about 90 per cent, but it’s still a cause for concern, keep checking. His oxygen was fluctuating I think between 84 to 87 to sometimes 95, and the fluctuations were quite strange, because obviously the human body should have 99, 98, technically speaking even 100, because that’s how healthy you should be. When we saw that it’s just not getting better, we thought okay, it’s high time he needs to go to the hospital.

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Self-isolation and testing at home

In the early days of the pandemic, when somebody had symptoms, the whole household was meant to go into self-isolation. This measure did not change until the summer of 2021, after vaccinations had become available. Without the possibility of getting a test to confirm whether other household members had Covid or not, the only way to seek help was to call the GP or the NHS helpline. In the early days of the pandemic helplines were busy, and people staffing them also had little information that was helpful. This could make people feel very isolated and desperate. This isolation could create particularly difficult circumstances, including having to home-school children, or after the loss of a loved one.

Gerry’s wife and son isolated with him when he had symptoms.

Also, if I’ve got Covid my family would have had it. I’m not saying that’s necessarily the case. But my son’s ten, so he’s under that age group where they don’t seem to show any signs. I think there’s the odd child that would. My daughter would have been 15, coming up for 16 at the time. So, I believe they’ve had it, and my wife’s…I think we’ve all had it. But I did ask before that as well, I think I asked about a week before about a test and they told me just isolate, and that’s what they were doing at the time. They were just telling people to self-isolate. That was the reason, oh, don’t go anywhere, just self-isolate. So, I think if they’d been testing at the time… But you also see the other side of it now where they are testing everybody. You’re getting more figures. So, was the uptake in April or March similar to the peaks that we’re getting at the moment? Nobody seems to really know. And that’s where I think they’ve maybe fallen down a wee bit, that they didn’t have enough of these tests. But who knew this was going to happen to us? I don’t think anybody could have forecasted this.

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When mass testing became more widely accessible from the end of May 2020, people could get confirmation as to whether they may have Covid. Whilst testing resolved uncertainties and anxieties for some, it raised new questions for others.

Elizabeth worried that she brought Covid home to her husband.

I actually, because I’m an NHS health worker they offered to have the antibody check I did have the antibody check. Family said, I was in bits, mum, don’t blame yourself. I did share that I had antibodies, so I had been, I had it. I had no obvious signs and symptoms that I had it.

I think maybe on the, you look back and you’re thinking maybe the Monday, Tuesday before he became ill on the Wednesday did I…because I just felt a bit off. But then I get really bad hay fever at that time of the year. But there was nothing to stop me from functioning. I just felt a bit tired, and I do wonder was it then or did I pick it up when he obviously was at home. I don’t know. And I try not to go down that way because I’m not stupid; I know there’s a chance that I could have brought it home, I know there is. But then he was out and about and meeting other people so, and I maybe said, don’t blame you, you don’t know where it’s come from. So, I do have to try and put that to a side and think we don’t know and everything, so.

No, we don’t know.

We don’t know, and you could tie, could tie yourself in knots and think, did I, did I give it to him. Because at that time they weren’t really, if they sent anybody off to the acute, they weren’t really testing them. But then I hadn’t been, I know it’s not long, at work for about a week. So, you just…I don’t know.

But it also meant that you didn’t feel ill around that time.

I didn’t feel ill, no. No, I had no specific symptoms.

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When more than one person is ill

As Covid-19 is a contagious viral infection, there was often more than one person who was ill within one household. However, Covid impacted people in...