West Bromwich Albion striker Charlie Austin is recovering after displaying coronavirus symptoms, and having suffered acutely despite not being considered among those vulnerable, he has warned of its potential effect on the young as well as the elderly.

The 30-year-old is self-isolating at home and has had no face-to-face contact with his family under the same roof since Saturday evening, when symptoms first emerged. Then he called West Brom’s club doctor, Kevin Conrod, and was advised to isolate himself in a bedroom. He has stayed there since, and was told not to resume contact with his wife and three children in the rest of the house until early this evening.

Speaking to Telegraph Sport, Austin said that his temperature soared to 39.7C on Sunday and Monday nights and he simultaneously experienced cold sweats. “I felt like someone had chucked a bucket of water over me,” he said. “I was soaking.” He has recovered and has communicated with team-mates at West Brom – second in the Championship and on course for promotion when the league was suspended last week – to tell them how ill he felt.

“Before I started feeling the symptoms on Saturday, I was on the phone to my wife Bianca’s mother and I said to her that I hoped if anyone in our family got ill it would be me,” said Austin, who believed he had the virus. “I felt like I was fit and healthy and I could handle it. A week later and I would say to anyone, even those in their twenties and thirties, ‘Don’t take it lightly – it’s serious’. I get that people who haven’t got it are going about their lives. Last week, I was living my life. Not that I didn’t take coronavirus seriously. But this is extremely serious and we should take it that way.”