The coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has taught us that a pandemic of this scale discriminates no one.
It means that even the healthiest people can get infected.
And perhaps what makes the disease even scarier is the fact that many people wind up with absolutely no symptoms at all, resulting with them unknowingly spreading the virus even further.
To add to the already present horror of the virus, scientists have discovered emerging evidence of coronavirus-linked brain damage.
Researchers at University College London (UCL) published a study detailing the occurrence of some form of brain damage, nerve damage, psychosis, delirium, or other neurological complications in 43 patients who were confirmed positive for COVID-19.
According to one of the study's co-leaders, UCL Institute of Neurology's Michael Zandi, no one is sure if we'll be seeing a pandemic-scale spread of this coronavirus-linked brain damage, citing the encephalitis lethargica outbreak in the 1920s and 1930s.
Instead, we'll have to adopt a wait-and-see approach.
Although COVID-19 is predominantly a respiratory illness, scientists and researchers think that the emerging evidence linking it to brain damage is worrisome.
In the UCL study, nine patients were observed to have developed acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), which is a type of brain inflammation normally found in children when virally infected.
The team's London-based specialist clinic would often times see only one adult patient with ADEM a month. However, more recently the clinic has attended to at least one adult with ADEM per week.
"Given that the disease has only been around for a matter of months, we might not yet know what long-term damage COVID-19 can cause," says Ross Paterson, a co-leader of the study.
A separate study in The Lancet Psychiatry found brain complications in 125 people who had fallen seriously ill with the coronavirus in UK hospitals.
Tom Solomon, one of the co-authors of that study told the BBC that while the coronavirus was initially viewed as a respiratory illness, people are starting to notice its neurological impacts as well.
"Part of it is due to lack of oxygen to the brain," says Solomon, adding that there are accompanying issues like "problems with blood clotting and a hyper-inflammatory response of the immune system."
And over in Canada, neuroscientist Adrian Owen has kickstarted a global online study revolving around people who either have or have had COVID-19, testing their cognitive skills through a series of fun and engaging activities they can do on their computers.
It's called the COVID-19 Brain Study, which you can check out here.
"This disease is affecting an enormous number of people. That's why it's so important to collect this information now," says Owen.
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