A man who contracted COVID-19 last March is still suffering from lingering symptoms, including fatigue and muscle weakness, and is currently receiving physiotherapy to get back on track.

Renowned actor Mario Micallef, usually a jovial character, recounted with Times of Malta his “painful and terrorising” experience in hospital when he was very close to dying and how he was now dealing with his remaining symptoms, primarily shortness of breath and a nasty cough.

“Just 10 days before, a friend of mine, my age, died of COVID so I was conscious about the risks I faced when I got the virus. I was scared, worried and terrorised. I thought I was going to die... and I was so close to it,” Micallef said.

He explained how he caught a cold in the beginning of March but had not given it much thought because it was an annual event.

“But it started getting worse and my children told me it might be COVID. I took the test and it was positive,” he said.

“After some time, my symptoms started getting worse. My oxygen levels plummeted and I had to be hospitalised.

“After a day and a half in hospital, the doctor told me they had to intubate me. I spent 14 days in the Intensive Therapy Unit,” Micallef said about his COVID-induced coma.

“I was very close to dying. There were days when my lungs collapsed and my kidneys failed. There was one specific day, March 19, when I was really close to dying. I was in a bad state,” he said as he remembered how his family was suffering more because he was in a coma while they were receiving the bad news from doctors.

Micallef recalled how he had very bad dreams while in a coma and had to be tied to his bed when he came back to his senses and found all those pipes around him.

It’s been six months and I still have certain symptoms but I’m improving

“I spent 14 days in the COVID ITU and then another 11 or 12 days in the proper ITU. There were about five or six of the days when I was close to dying.

“Doctors told me I managed to pull it off because I was healthy,” he said.

“I was completely lethargic... without any energy.

“Physiotherapists had started working on me when I was still in a coma. They used to come daily to do exercises.

“I was told I was the naughtiest patient,” he said jokingly.

But his mood suddenly turned serious when he recalled how two of six patients who were in hospital at the same time as he did not make it, despite being younger.

Micallef, who stopped smoking 24 years ago, said he lost 13.5 kilos while in hospital as he spent 15 days eating through a nasal feeder.

Although he lacked energy, he said physiotherapists would insist on getting him out of bed to start getting his muscles moving again.

“They started giving me light exercises to do and encouraged me to achieve more. I started enjoying my progress and asked the physios to come more often but they were too busy.

“I do not have enough words of praise for what they managed to do for me,” he said.

Micallef said he continued receiving physiotherapy after his release from hospital and only stopped the sessions recently.

“You need to be patient. Do whatever the doctors tell you. It’s been six months and I still have certain symptoms but I’m improving. I could not even eat alone when I left hospital. I’m still lethargic and have a nasty cough,” he said as he appealed to people to get vaccinated.

According to a recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet, nearly half of the people who are hospitalised with the coronavirus suffer at least one lingering symptom one year after being discharged.

The largest study yet to examine the recovery of a group of COVID survivors 12 months after the illness found that they had problems with mobility, pain or discomfort, anxiety or depression and had low self-assessment scores of quality of life.

“Symptoms such as persistent fatigue, breathlessness, brain fog and depression could debilitate many millions of people globally. Long COVID is a modern medical challenge of the first order,” The Lancet’s editorial board wrote.