CORONAVIRUS has infected over 200,000 people globally according to World Health Organisation (WHO) and as patients battle with the deadly virus across the globe, one of them simply identified as Kevin Harris, has shared details about the virus which he iterated almost killed him.

Hospitalised in Ohio, a midwestern state in the United States (U.S), Harris is one of the people who has come down with COVID-19 but is gradually recovering.

However, before he ‘got out of the woods’ as his doctors described it, Harris explained in a recent interview that he thought he was going to die.

According to him, it all started on the evening of Monday, March 2, when he felt a strange tickle in his throat. Harris explains that it felt like something was stuck in his throat and didn’t want to get out.

After a long night of restless sleep, Harris recalls that by morning, it had graduated to what he thought was a flu and a fever

I started coughing,” he said.

“That was the first sign and it went downhill in 24 hours, like gangbusters. I woke up several times thinking I was gonna die,” 55-year-old Harris recounted on his hospital bed.

Harris had booked an appointment with a doctor and he said he visited the hospital and he was told he had a flu and the doctor prescribed something for the flu.

However, he said he felt ten times worse few days after constantly using the medication.

It was at that point the father of four said he called his friend, whose wife came to visit him and told him he had pneumonia and decided they should get to the hospital. As he hopped in the shower to take a bath, he passed out.

Harris was admitted at the Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital in Warren, U.S on March 8, where his sickness was declared unknown by the doctors until March 11, when he tested positive to coronavirus.

According to him, they had for three days told him he didn’t have coronavirus as he didn’t display the regular symptoms and he had attested to not being in contact with anybody for two weeks before he caught the virus.

“I hadn’t seen anyone in 10 days before I caught the virus,” he said.

The coronavirus patient recalls that his doctor had tears in her eyes when she broke the news to him despite initially informing him that he didn’t have coronavirus.

He said he was told that nothing could be done as there was no cure and all he could do was pray.

” They basically told me to pray,” Harris pointed out.

Having spent weeks in the hospital and now feeling slightly better, Harris is now preaching social distancing and advocating that people take the virus more seriously.

“Do not go in the crowds. Do not shake hands. Stop hugging each other,” he said. “Wash your hands continually. Do not kiss on your kids. There are thousands of people carrying this virus around. They may never get it.

“People need to stay away from other people. They call it social distancing — I say just be anti-social. Just stay away from other people,” Harris said.

Unlike Harris who appears lucky to have survived the fatality of the virus, over 8,000 people have been recorded dead after contracting COVID-19, according to WHO.

In Nigeria, twelve persons have tested positive to the deadly virus but no death as a result of coronavirus has been recorded in the country.

However, a lack of a known cure or vaccine leaves many people worried and in panic mode as the death toll rises daily.

Recently, president of the United States, Donald Trump endorsed chloroquine as possible treatment for coronavirus, submitting that the U.S Food and Drug Agency (FDA) had approved it.

However, his statement was disclaimed when the FDA said there are no “FDA-approved therapeutics or drugs to treat, cure or prevent COVID-19.”

Meanwhile, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on Friday announced that it had approved the production of chloroquine for clinical trials in preventing the spread of  COVID-19.