With Covid-19 infections taking about a week before the person feels symptoms, it got me wondering if there are any at-home ways to track health status to be able to recognize when you might have an infection but just not realize it.
As someone who works out regularly, one of the first indications I have that I’m getting sick is that I feel more fatigued in my workout. My normal day-to-day activities don’t stress my body enough to indicate anything is wrong, but it becomes evident during the workout. Of course other things can also contribute to fatigue, such as lack of sleep, nutrition, and so on, but getting sick will definitely make the workout harder.
So along those lines, would it be beneficial to self-monitor things like heart rate, temperature, O2 levels, or anything else? Those can all be easily done at home. Some fitness watches even already track some of that info. Or do something like hold your breath for a certain amount of time and track the change in O2 levels to see how long it takes to get back to normal. The monitoring alone won’t tell you if you have the virus, but if you track the changes over time, would there be certain changes which would be likely to indicate you might be coming down with something?
Obviously the best thing to do is get tested if you suspect you have it, but if it takes 7 days to show symptoms, you’d have to get tested even when you felt fine to know if you were in the early stages. And with the current testing situation we have in the US, both from difficulty and cost, that’s not a practical option for most people. But if there are at-home ways to spot the possibility of an illness early on, it could help people know when they should be extra aware.