Intensive care professionals insert an endotracheal tube into a coronavirus-positive patient (COVID-19) in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Florida, February 11, 2021.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Some patients with Covid-19 are experiencing shortness of breath, fatigue, headaches and “brain fog” for months to almost a year after their initial illness. Now, global medical experts are working to diagnose and treat them better for what they are tentatively calling “Covid Long”.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organization organized a global meeting with “patients, doctors and other stakeholders” to advance the agency’s understanding of what is clinically known as a post-Covid condition, also known as Long Covid, Director-General WHO General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.
The meeting was the first of many to come. The goal will eventually be to create an “agreed clinical description” of the condition so that doctors can effectively diagnose and treat patients, he said. Considering how many people were infected with the virus worldwide – almost 108 million people on Friday – Tedros warned that many are likely to experience these persistent symptoms.
“This disease affects patients with severe and mild Covid-19,” Tedros said during a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. “Part of the challenge is that patients with long Covid may have a variety of different symptoms that can be persistent or come and go.”
Limited data
So far, there are a limited number of studies that discern what are the most common long Covid symptoms or how long they can last. Most of the focus has been on people with serious or fatal illnesses, not those who have recovered, but still report persistent side effects, sometimes called “long distance trucks”.
Most Covid patients are believed to recover just a few weeks after the initial diagnosis, but some have symptoms for six months, or even almost a year, medical experts say.
One of Long Covid’s largest global studies published in early January found that many people who suffer from continuous illness after infection are unable to return to work at full capacity six months later. The study, which was published in MedRxiv and not peer-reviewed, surveyed more than 3,700 people aged 18 to 80 years from 56 countries to identify symptoms.
The most frequent symptoms experienced after six months were fatigue, tiredness after exercise and cognitive impairment, sometimes referred to as brain fog, the study found.
Is this exclusive to Covid-19?
“We really don’t know what is causing these symptoms. That is the main focus of the research now,” said Dr. Allison Navis, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine on Mount Sinai, during a call with the Infectious Disease Society of America. on Friday.
“There is a question as to whether this is something unique to Covid itself – and it is the Covid virus that is triggering these symptoms – or whether it could be part of a general post-viral syndrome,” said Navis, adding that medical experts see the same time – I have symptoms after other viral infections.
Another study published in early January in the medical journal The Lancet studied 1,733 patients who were discharged from a hospital in Wuhan, China, between January and May last year. Of these patients, 76% reported at least one symptom six months after their initial illness. The proportion was higher in women.
“We found that fatigue or muscle weakness, sleep difficulties and anxiety or depression were common, even 6 months after the onset of symptoms,” wrote the researchers in the study.
They noted that the symptoms reported months after someone’s Covid-19 diagnosis was consistent with data previously found in follow-up studies of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, which is also a coronavirus.
Post-Covid clinics go online
Some major medical centers are setting up post-Covid clinics to help care for patients with persistent symptoms. Navis said that her clinic in Mount Sinai, New York City, treated a “fairly uniform” distribution of men and women with persistent illnesses, and the average age of patients is 40, she said.
Dr. Kathleen Bell, a professor at the University of Texas’ Southwestern Medical Center, said her hospital’s Covid-19 clinic started last April, when a wave of infections hit Italy and New York at the start of the pandemic.
Bell, speaking on the call to the Infectious Disease Society of America on Friday, said that a range of professionals is needed to attend clinics, since symptoms are uneven, including specialists who can treat muscle weakness, heart disease and problems. cognitive disorders for people with mental health problems after diagnosis.
“It really is, in many ways, forcing all of us to come together and make sure we have open lines of communication to address all of these problems for patients,” said Bell.
Bell added that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made a call to long Covid centers across the country in January to discuss their model of treating patients.
“I really think that the CDC is now trying to bring the centers together and get some tougher guidelines for that, which is very exciting,” said Bell.
– CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report.