Massachusetts Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel is back at work a month after confirming she had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Bharel told WGBH News' Joe Mathieu Friday morning "I'm thankfully feeling back to normal" after weeks of quarantine and what she described as "about a week of really bad flu-like symptoms and then another week of just sheer exhaustion."
The normal flu usually lasts a few days, she said, so "I was really struck by how long I was sick from this."
Bharel noted that there is still no treatment for COVID-19, so she stuck to Tylenol, fluids and rest to care for her symptoms.
The commissioner announced March 27 that she had tested positive and was quarantined. Gov. Charlie Baker said at the time that she had been careful about distancing herself from other senior officials even before her infection.
Her own infection really drove home to her the importance of social distancing and other preventative measures, Bharel said. "My experience is really an example of why it matters."
Bharel sidestepped a question about President Donald Trump's suggestion Thursday that doctors might experiment with injecting patients with disinfectants, and instead directed people to go to the state's website to find the most up-to-date information on the disease.
"Because COVID-19 is a new and evolving disease, we know what we know, but there is a lot of information that we still don't know," she said. "And in those gaps, there is a lot of misinformation, as well."
