Saints' Emmanuel Sanders Fears His Health Could Worsen After COVID-19 Diagnosis

New Orleans Saints wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders is concerned his condition could get worse after being diagnosed with COVID-19. 

Sanders spoke on Uninterrupted's 17 Weeks podcast, saying he worries every night going to sleep about his ability to breathe:

"Every night I go to sleep I'm like, 'Lord, please, let me wake up in the morning feeling good. Like, I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and can't breathe. And like, s--t just goes south, right? That's like my biggest fear in watching that s--t, it intensifies my fears, right? Because people can say whatever you want and everybody could say, 'Oh yeah, I'm not scared to get COVID.' But in the back of your head, and you may think you're healthy, but in the back of your head, you don't know this virus. Nobody knows anything about this virus. You don't know how your body's gonna react and you don't know at any moment, like if s--t will go south, right?”

Sanders said he began developing symptoms at the team facility before testing positive last Thursday.

In the interview, he noted he felt "loopy" and had symptoms like his mouth drooling and nausea. At one point, Sanders' fever reached 102 degrees.

"I felt it coming on that Thursday. Just body aches. Like literally I was laying in bed just shivering. 102 fever...like at night time, like last night, I think I hit like 100. And then the night before that I had 101 and then the first night I hit 102. But every night, like it comes back, my fever comes back. At night time around eight o’clock we both get like these weird like loopy feelings. Like, it feels like we’re glitchy. Like when I’m walking it feels like if my wife was to talk to me, it feels like I’m skipping a beat every now and then. It’s like the weirdest shit ever, and that comes like around like seven or eight.”

Sanders is expected to miss this week's game against the Chicago Bears and likely next week's game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.