Alyssa Milano says her COVID-19 symptoms still linger — 6 months after she fell ill
Alyssa Milano wants you to take COVID-19 seriously, because she knows firsthand what it can do.
The actress and activist is one of the dozens of celebrities directly affected by the coronavirus. She fell ill in March, experiencing shortness of breath, headaches, loss of smell and a fever. Milano also couldn’t keep any food down, and she lost nine pounds in two weeks. She was sick through April, but even today — six months later — she’s waiting to feel completely better.
“There are still lingering effects, like I still have shortness of breath,” Milano tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I still have heart palpitations. I have, like, a high-pitched noise in my ear. My hair is falling out.”
This makes Milano one of the so-called COVID-19 long haulers, people who find themselves continuing to deal with symptoms months after diagnosis.
The Who’s the Boss? star revealed in August that she’d had COVID-19 in the spring, even though she tested negative several times. “This is not a hoax,” she cautioned people then, adding that she had felt like she was dying.
Milano says now that she realizes she’s far from the only one experiencing this.
“We should definitely begin to shift the focus on post-COVID syndrome and, you know, try to figure out what the lasting repercussions are,” she says.
For now, she’s doing what she can to rebuild her immune system.
“This is a really rough, rough illness,” Milano says. “We can’t think that this is over and done with, because it surely is not.”
— Video produced by Nurys Castillo
For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along at https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please reference the CDC’s and WHO’s resource guides.
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