A 40-year-old man who pulled back from the coronavirus brink says problems linger—‘Sometimes I am afraid to close my eyes’

This spring, Raju Sarker was in respiratory failure. His kidneys had shut down and his blood pressure was falling. Days from death in a Singapore hospital, with his mother back home in Bangladesh saying prayers, something inexplicable happened: He pulled back from the brink.
That was seven months ago. Since then, Mr. Sarker has struggled to regain his full health. The 40-year-old, who worked in Singapore laying internet lines to support his family, has long been free of the coronavirus. But he said his doctors tell him he still isnt well enough to leave the country and return to his family.
Mr. Sarker is now encountering a different side of the disease: the long-haul effects that doctors are just beginning to understand. These can include fatigue, chest pain and heart inflammation, and many dont have any obvious connection to the symptoms such as coughing and fever that often kick off Covid-19.
John Swartzberg, an infectious disease specialist and clinical professor emeritus at the School of Public Health of the University of California, Berkeley, said long-term effects from severe cases have to be monitored in many parts of the body, including the central nervous system.
Doctors think people like Mr. Sarker who have survived after being put on a ventilator will likely need at least a year for recovery, Dr. Swartzberg said, but we dont know it will be a year because it hasnt been a year yet since Covid-19 emerged.