Cameron van der Burgh, the 2012 Olympic 100m breaststroke champion, has urged people to continue to be attentive to COVID-19 and be mindful of the vulnerable after he overcame the disease.
The South African revealed in March that he had been battling the coronavirus and explained how tough it was even for a young, fit man only a little beyond his athletic prime.
The former world-record holder is now back to full health but called on people to remain conscious of the health risks for themselves and others who may be more susceptible to contracting COVID-19.
Photo Courtesy: Anesh Debiky/Swimming South Africa
Van der Burgh was speaking as an ambassador for Laureus, the organisation that supports sport for development programmes across the world and harnesses sport as a force for change.
He said:
“I’m feeling a lot better. I’m fully recovered now from the illness. It was obviously a little bit tougher than the normal flu but luckily it gave me good spirits and good health and (I’m) back to normal.
“It’s very important for everybody to be very careful for their health and take it as not such a joke.
“Even on top of giving it (if) you’re not the age demographic you can still be quite a serious carrier of this disease and spread it around to somebody that might need to be hospitalised and would be in a lot more serious condition than what you are in.
“So it’s imperative that everybody pays real important attention to this and (make sure) we all do our part and are able to stop the spread.”
Funny how the media never reports when someone makes a full recovery. If anyone falls into the vulnerable category they should not leave their homes so the rest of the world can go back to work so they can be able to pay their bills and not become homeless.
Not sure what media you read, listen to and watch Nathan but I’ve read tons of stories about people who have recovered and lived to tell the tales of some serious health issues that have lasted 8 weeks and more from infection to feeling able to go out for a short walk without feeling exhausted. The media in Europe is certainly stacked high with stories of the recovered, every day, big headlines having been made of the stories of recovery of virologists, doctors, other experts and even folk who haven’t displayed encouraging levels of knowledge but did have a lot to say on matters at hand, such as politicians. Genuinely, tons of recovery stories out there – and many have fed into the knowledge being accumulated yet by experts working on remedies, vaccines and related strategies. Of course, a feature of this virus is that some infected are asymptomatic, others have mild symptoms. Many media mentions of all of those but “Man with no symptoms says ‘I’m fine’.” does indeed play second fiddle to “World-renowned virologist back to work with a warning about renal dialysis” or whatever the line might be … and any who don’t get that may be wise to count themselves among those who wouldn’t know a news story if it was coming at them like a runaway train.