{"doi":"10.1101/2021.03.10.21253330","title":"Characterizing the COVID-19 illness experience to inform the study of post-acute sequelae and recovery: a qualitative study","abstract":"We aimed to characterize the variability in the illness experience and recovery process from COVID-19. We conducted in-depth individual interviews with participants enrolled in the Long-term Immunological Impact of Novel Coronavirus (LIINC) cohort study in San Francisco, California from June through October of 2020. Participants were adults who had a previously confirmed positive SARV-CoV-2 nucleic acid amplification test result, had recovered or were recovering from acute infection, and underwent serial evaluations at our clinical research center. We purposefully sampled 24 English- and Spanish-speaking adults with asymptomatic, mild and severe symptomatic infection, including those who were hospitalized, and those with HIV co-infection. Half of our sample (50.0%) identified as Latinx/Hispanic and most of the participants were men (62.5%). We used thematic analysis to characterize the illness experience, recovery process, and mental health impact of experiencing COVID-19 and present clinical data for each participant. Emergent themes were: (1) across symptom profiles and severity, experiencing COVID-19 was associated with psychological distress, (2) among participants with symptomatic infection, the illness experience was characterized by uncertainty in terms of managing symptoms and recovery, and (3) despite wide-ranging illness experiences, participants shared many common characteristics, including health information-seeking behavior facilitated by access to medical care, and uncertainty regarding the course of their illness and recovery. COVID-19 was associated with elevated levels of psychological distress, regardless of symptoms.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2021,"id":216464,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8777,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":720408,"name":"Andrés Maiorana","orcid":"0000-0002-7456-6790","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228705,"name":"Michael J. Peluso","orcid":"0000-0003-0585-6230","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":71690,"name":"Rebecca Hoh","orcid":"0000-0001-5112-4220","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":618497,"name":"Viva Tai","orcid":"0000-0003-1415-0766","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":622203,"name":"Emily A. Fehrman","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":620546,"name":"Yanel Hernandez","orcid":"0000-0001-5971-3898","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":235412,"name":"Leonel Torres","orcid":"0009-0002-4487-6621","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366531,"name":"Matthew A. Spinelli","orcid":"0000-0001-6368-8664","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241509,"name":"Monica Gandhi","orcid":"0000-0002-7025-1994","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":252180,"name":"J. Daniel Kelly","orcid":"0000-0002-7616-0321","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":239684,"name":"Jeffrey N. Martin","orcid":"0000-0002-9773-3256","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":239686,"name":"Timothy J. Henrich","orcid":"0000-0002-6684-0622","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":71691,"name":"Steven G. Deeks","orcid":"0000-0001-6371-747X","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":404317,"name":"John A. Sauceda","orcid":"0000-0003-1975-3080","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":720407,"name":"Edda I. Santiago-Rodríguez","orcid":"0000-0001-7076-6907","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":24,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:53:11.245932Z","pmid":"33758881","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}