Doctors are gaining more and more experience with Covid-19 patients in whom breathing fails. They report unusual effects of the virus on the lungs.
Many dark areas, light clouds (which indicate fluid accumulation) only on the edge: CT images of Covid 19 patients differ from those of other people with pneumonia.
The outbreak of the novel corona virus started with a misunderstanding. The genome of the pathogen, which was still completely unknown at the time, was so similar to that of the already known Sars virus that researchers assumed that it was similar in the body.
The virus is not so contagious, scientists like Christian Drosten of the Charité concluded. It mainly affects the lower respiratory tract and thus the lungs, so it has to get there for an infection. The first contact with Sars-CoV-2 in Germany showed that the researchers were wrong.
When the first people in Germany near Munich got infected, a team led by Drosten was able to extract and multiply viruses from the affected person's throat swabs . With Sars, this was never successful. Since then it has been clear: the new type of corona virus not only affects the lungs, it mainly settles in the upper airways and throat.
This has advantages for the virus. It is much easier to get from one person to another, the way from throat to throat is much shorter than the way from lungs to lungs. But people also benefit because upper respiratory tract infections can be unpleasant but almost never dangerous.
Comparatively rarely, however, the novel coronavirus also penetrates into the lungs and triggers inflammation there. In Germany, around two percent of the detected infected are affected. The consequences that doctors are currently observing differ in several respects from known serious respiratory infections.
