Lena Dunham has revealed she was diagnosed with Covid-19 in March and is still suffering symptoms.

The 34-year-old actress has now opened up about her battle with the virus with a plea for people to take social distancing more seriously and stop treating lives with such ''carelessness''.

Lena wrote on Instagram: ''I don't want to unnecessarily add my voice to a noise landscape on such a challenging topic, as an unfathomable number of people have lost their lives to COVID-19.

''But seeing the carelessness with which so many in the United States are treating social distancing, people jogging without masks and parties on Instagram, I feel compelled to be honest about the impact this illness has had on me, in the hopes that personal stories allow us to see the humanity in what can feel like abstract situations.''

Lena - who suffers with the rare disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and has had a longstanding battle with endometriosis - added: ''I feel blessed to have entered this experience as a sick person; otherwise I don't know how I would have tolerated crossing that threshold from well to unwell.''

Speaking about her battle with Covid-19, Lena explained that her body ''revolted''.

She said: ''Suddenly my body simply... revolted. The nerves in my feet burned and muscles wouldn't seem to do their job. I couldn't sleep but I couldn't wake up. I lost my sense of taste and smell. A hacking cough, like a metronome keeping time. Inability to breathe after simple tasks like getting a glass of water. Random red washes. A pounding headache right between my eyes. It felt like I was a complex machine that had been unplugged and then had my wires rerouted into the wrong inputs.''

Lena self-isolated during her illness and said: ''I couldn't believe how intense the loneliness had been, in addition to the illness.''

And the star implored people to protect themselves and those around them, as she continues to suffer with swollen hands, migraines, fatigue and a flare-up of her arthritis.

She wrote: ''This isn't like passing the flu to your co-worker. This is the biggest deal in our country, and in the world right now. When you take the appropriate measures to protect yourself and your neighbors, you save them a world of pain. You save them a journey that no one deserves to take, with a million outcomes we don't yet understand, and a million people with varying resources and varying levels of support who are not ready for this tidal wave to take them (sic).''