[Burnett:] Tonight, a new survey revealing thousands of coronavirus patients reporting new and dangerous symptoms with long-term consequences concentration issues, memory issues, severe headaches, chronic diarrhea months after they had the virus. And most of the patients who are saying this did not have severe cases at the time, 91 percent of them did not go to the hospital when initially diagnosed. Joining me now, Michael Rutgers. He studies the long term effects of the coronavirus. He is the director of the Lung Foundation in the Netherlands, joining me from there tonight. Michael, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know it's late there. So, you've been looking at people who think they got away easy, mild symptoms, you know, they just barely even got sick. You're now finding thousands of them are reporting new and worse symptoms months after they had coronavirus, with 60 percent of them still unable to go back to work after 80 days. How shocked were you to learn this?
[Michael Rutgers, Director, Lung Foundation Netherlands, Studying Long- Term Impacts Of Coronavirus:] You know, we were surprised by that finding. I can't say they had mild symptoms. They had symptoms but not as bad that they had to go to the hospital. We set up this website to care for these people after their acute phase. But it turned out most people came to the website and whom we sent a questionnaire, most people had not be in the hospital. About 87 percent were not in the hospital. And had the same symptoms and the same number of symptoms and the same severity of symptoms as the people who went to the hospital and survived. So, it was quite surprising.
[Burnett:] And so, when you look at this, you say 87 percent of the people that you surveyed were not hospitalized. But many of them are now having these severe symptoms, right, including
[Rutgers:] Yes.
[Burnett:] you know, intense fatigue, shortness of breath, increased heart rate while they're resting, palpitations, elevated pulse, chronic diarrhea, severe memory issues to the extent that some of them have trouble, you know, feel they can't mentally be the same as they were before.
[Rutgers:] Yeah.
[Burnett:] I mean, what are the is there any part of the body that isn't affected? What stands out what you saw in people's responses?
[Rutgers:] Well, we were surprised that it was not only symptoms related to lung disease. It was also symptoms related to all kind of other organs, as you mentioned. So, we are surprised about it. The people were surprised about it as well. And that these symptoms, they keep ongoing for so long, at least 80 days. We're going to send them a questionnaire again in 1-12 months and find out how they are now. But we are not hopeful that we don't we are hopeful, of course, that they recover. But the speed of recovery seems to be quite slow. And that's a worrying thing, especially from our group. Six of them dozens haven't gone to work 80 days after the first infection which is really worrying, especially now in the U.S. I guess, if it happens to you, with thousands of people, if you translate our results to your country, then those people who are that sick, they can't go to work, it will cause bigger problems for them apart from the unemployment which is already soaring to your side.
[Burnett:] And, look, it's deeply worrying and troubling because we just don't know how long these last, whether these are life long for people.
[Rutgers:] No.
[Burnett:] Which is why it's so terrifying. You know, I've talked to a lot of coronavirus patients who told me some of their longer term effects that they've had. One of them is our Richard Quest, and here's what he said.
[Quest:] Suddenly, I was falling over in the street, tripping over a paving stone clearly in front of my eyes, dropping a bowl of sugar because when I went to get it, I missed it.
[Burnett:] Obviously, coronavirus is supposed to be a respiratory virus but you have also seen people talk about these sort of neurological effects.
[Rutgers:] Yep. We have. Indeed, we've heard from people who have memory loss, who have difficulty in focusing, concentrating, difficulties in putting a few sentences together. And it does improve, but it improves quite slowly. As this disease is developing now, we don't know what the disease will look like in the long term. We're monitoring those people. We're getting a lot of messages from these people. And together with them, we try to build up an idea on how to care for them because if we don't have the disease, we don't know how to care for those people and we don't know how to give them assistance to regain their life and their livelihood. So, it's important, I think to develop research, to get the care system in place to support people and to improving. Training will help. Nutrition will help. So, there are several things which we could do and can do, but we have to work our way slowly forward to develop proper care.
[Burnett:] OK.
[Rutgers:] Proper care for them.
[Burnett:] Well, Michael, I really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. And next Dr. Deborah Birx has become one of the president's most trusted advisers on coronavirus. Some of her peers are telling CNN that there are some questions now about her credibility. And W. Kamau Bell speaking with his mother about growing up black in America.