Seattle resident explains what it was like to have COVID-19

SEATTLE, Wash. — One woman in Washington state recently recovered after testing positive for the deadly coronavirus.

Eryn Cooper FaceTimed with her Tuesday afternoon to hear what it was like to have the illness.

Elizabeth Schneider said felt sick just days after a party with friends in late February.

"We kind of jokingly said, like, 'oh my gosh what if we all had the coronavirus,'" Schneider told NC9 on Tuesday. “It just came on as the onset of a really bad flu.”

Her first red flag, however, was how a dozen of her friends from that party felt the same way.

“That’s a pretty significant number of people for one party particularly when no one was visibly sick or coughed on us or anything,” she said.

On March 1st, Schneider decided to get tested by the University of Washington’s “Seattle Flu Study” which recently started testing for COVID-19.

A week later, she got her results back.

“I got COVID-19, and likely everyone else at the party got COVID-19,” she said.

Schneider is from King County in the Seattle area.

As of Tuesday, The Washington State Health Department reported that county has the most cases of COVID-19. The area has 116 confirmed and 20 of the state’s 22 deaths.

"Thankfully, I didn’t have any life threatening symptoms and I seem to be recovering on my own," Schneider said.

The CDC lists the 3 primary symptoms of COVID-19 to be fever, cough, and shortness of breath. But Schneider only had a fever.

“I had body aches, I had a headache, I had chills, a little bit of nausea one day,” she said. "I think the biggest misconception is that it always comes with respiratory distress or a cough.”

It's misconceptions about the virus that Schneider discussed in a Facebook post that has since gone viral.

She addressed another issue with NC9. She said her her friends who were also sick but not showing typical COVID-19 symptoms were not offered a COVID-19 test by their doctors.

“I think a lot of the people were getting frustrated by their doctors,” Schneider said. “The doctors said 'you’re not a high risk category.'”

Schnieder said she’s been symptom-free for about a week now.

“Thankfully, I didn’t have any life threatening symptoms and I seem to be recovering on my own,” she said.

She hopes sharing her now-viral story will help stop the illness from becoming more viral.

“I think a lot of people globally are contracting this infection globally and not realizing t and not getting tested and going out into the world and unknowingly infecting other people," Schneider said.

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