Dr. Allison P. Navis, a specialist in neuro-infectious diseases at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, said that about 75 percent of her 200 post-Covid patients were experiencing problems such as “depression, anxiety, irritability or some symptoms of mood. “
Study participants were predominantly white and 70 percent were women. Dr. Navis and others said the lack of diversity probably reflected the demographics of people able to seek care relatively early in the pandemic, rather than the full spectrum of people affected by post-Covid neurological symptoms.
“Especially in New York City, the majority of patients who fell ill with Covid are people of color and patients with Medicaid, and these are not at all the patients who see themselves in the post-Covid center,” said Navis. “Most patients are white, they often have private insurance, and I think we need to find out a little more about what is happening with these disparities – whether it is purely just a lack of access or whether symptoms are being dispensed with. colored people or if it’s something else. “
In the Northwestern study, Dr. Koralnik said that because the coronavirus test was difficult to obtain at the beginning of the pandemic, only half of the participants had tested positive for the coronavirus, but all had the initial physical symptoms of Covid-19. The study found very little difference between those who tested positive and those who did not. Dr. Koralnik said that those with a negative test tend to contact the clinic about a month later in the course of the disease than those with a positive test, possibly because some spent weeks being evaluated or trying to get their problems treated by others. doctors.
Khan was among the participants who tested negative for the virus, but she said she later tested positive for antibodies to the coronavirus, proof that she had been infected.
Another study participant, Eddie Palacios, 50, a commercial real estate agent who lives in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago, tested positive for coronavirus in the fall, with only headache and loss of taste and smell. But “a month later, things have changed,” he said.