Severe coronavirus cases tend to get worse about five to 10 days after symptoms start. On average, coronavirus patients in Wuhan and Wenzhou, China, who were admitted to the hospital went in after about a week of symptoms. Those with critical cases were admitted to the ICU about three days later. Based on this research, doctors suspect that the first week of infection could be critical for determining whether a case is likely to become severe.
"We see that a lot of people stop shedding virus by day five to day seven — especially people who didn't have more severe cases," Megan Coffee, an infectious-disease clinician in New York City, told Business Insider. "Usually there's control of the virus fairly early on in that first week." But severe cases can lead to respiratory failure — when the blood doesn't receive enough oxygen. One way for doctors to flag these cases is to look for…
