CT Insider discusses COVID-19 recovery considerations for college athletes, especially the UConn women’s basketball team after a recent uptick of cases, and includes insight from Jordan D. Metzl, MD, sports medicine physician at HSS.

Dr. Metzl noted there are still some unknowns in knowing how the virus affects college athletes. He said, “Your body’s immune system fights any infection you have, if it’s a flu or COVID or whatever, and the more you exercise, the younger you are, the more robust your immune system is and the better able you are to fight infection.”

Dr. Metzl added that athletes who are fully vaccinated have a lesser chance of experiencing severe and ongoing symptoms.

 “If you’re a college-aged athlete you have less of a risk because of your age and your activity, and then if you’re vaccinated you have a double less of risk and so we think it’s pretty safe for those people. That being said, every disease affects different people differently,” he continued.

He explained, “This disease is a viral disease that can affect your fatigue, it can affect your muscle strength, it can affect your whole body. You feel lousy. It may predispose you to risk of injury and so like any viral illness, probably a little bit worse than the flu, you don’t want to be exercising if you have had COVID.”

According to Dr. Metzl, “People heal from different things differently. “And so, when it comes to exposure to COVID, how they fight it and how serious of a case they have, what parts of their body system might be affected, meaning was it their heart? Their lungs? Their fatigue? There’s a whole bunch of different things for everybody. There’s not a one-size-fits-all.”

Read the full article at CTInsider.com