President Donald Trump's battle with COVID-19 will come to a critical turning point in the next few days as the disease tests his immune system.
:"I'm starting to feel good. You don't know over the next period of a few days, I guess that's the real test, so we'll be seeing what happens over those next couple of days." The course of COVID-19 can be highly variable, but the next three to five days are likely to be crucial, physicians who have treated hundreds of coronavirus patients told USA TODAY.
Several days after symptoms of COVID-19 appear, the body's immune system must make an important switch to fight the virus with precision — or possibly face life-threatening consequences.COVID-19 patients can “look pretty good for a few days, then they go south,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. That rapid deterioration can occur when the body's immune system, unable to successfully target the virus, causes widespread collateral damage as it “brings in the troops,” Schaffner said. A typical timeframe for patents' decline is about five to 10 days after the person starts getting sick, said Dr. J. Randall Curtis, a professor of pulmonary and critical care at the University of Washington school of medicine in Seattle.During the early part of a patient's COVID-19 illness, the body uses an"agnostic" immune response, said Dr. Greg Poland, director and founder of Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group. It doesn't know what it's fighting, but realizes something potentially dangerous is occurring. That's called the innate immune system. Key to a successful recovery is an immune response that targets the coronavirus itself. That's called the adaptive immune system.
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