Canada resident who tested positive for COVID-19, still recovering after 257 days

A woman from Canada who caught coronavirus is still suffering from symptoms of the disease 257 days after she was infected.

Ashley Antonio, 35, from Edmonton only suffered mildly from the virus when she contracted in almost nine months ago. But now she appears to be suffering from the effects of so-called 'long Covid'.

Public health officials tend to agree that COVID-19 is usually described as a short-term illness with most people recovering within two weeks however it's become increasingly clear that this is not the case for everyone, and that the two-week period is only the 'acute illness' phase.

Antonio now suffers from a variety of complications some of which are painful and unpredictable, including blinding headaches, lung congestion, rashes, chronic swelling in her joints and heart palpitations. 'Some days I feel OK, other days I wake up and I can't breathe, I can't move,' Antonio said to CBC.

'I was extremely healthy. I had no pre-existing conditions, none of the comorbidities health officials were talking about, and it just came in like a wrecking ball and destroyed my life.'

Antonio has struggled for several months with what she says are debilitating symptoms and was forced to take off five months off work on short-term disability from her job as a Edmonton-based trial lawyer.

As someone who used to exercise every day she now she struggles to even get up the stairs without feeling out of breath. 'The media and the medical community seem to give the impression that you are either recovered within 10 days and life is normal again, or you die,' Antonio said.

'And there is a huge group of people that are struggling somewhere in the middle of that and our lives are impacted every day in terrible ways.'

Antonio first fell ill in late March and thought that she had been struck down with stomach flu. The following morning she woke up and could barely stand.

After about a week the symptoms subsided but this was only just the first wave. A few weeks later she felt ill once again and she began suffering body aches. Even standing up would make her heard race and a causal walk around the block lead to black-outs.