Critical care workers insert an endotracheal tube into a coronavirus disease-positive patient (COVID-19) in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Florida, on February 11, 2021.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Some Covid-19 patients experience difficulty breathing, 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 provisionally call “long Covid”.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organization organized a global meeting with “patients, clinicians and other stakeholders” to advance the agency’s understanding of what is medically known as post-covida disease. also known as covida, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday.
The meeting was the first of many to come. The goal will ultimately be to create an “agreed-upon clinical description” of the disease so doctors can effectively diagnose and treat patients, he said. Considering the number of people infected with the virus worldwide (about 108 million people as of 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 press conference at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. “Part of the challenge is that patients with long Covid may present with various symptoms that may be persistent or may come and go.”
Limited data
To date, there are a limited number of studies that discern what the most common symptoms of long Covid are or how long they can last. Most of the attention has been focused on people with serious or fatal illnesses, not on those people who have recovered, but who still report persistent side effects, sometimes called “long carriers”.
Most Covid patients are believed to recover within a few weeks after the initial diagnosis, but some have experienced symptoms for six months, or even about a year, according to medical experts.
One of the world’s longest-running Covid studies published in early January found that many people who suffer from ongoing illnesses after infection cannot return to full-time work six months later. The study, which was published in MedRxiv and was not reviewed by experts, surveyed more than 3,700 people between the ages of 18 and 80 in 56 countries to identify symptoms.
The most common symptoms experienced after six months were fatigue, fatigue after exercise, and cognitive dysfunction, sometimes called brain fog, according to the study.
Is it exclusive to Covid-19?
“We really don’t know what causes these symptoms. This is one of the main focuses of research right now,” said Dr. Allison Navis, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, during a call to the Society for Infectious Diseases. Friday in America.
“There is a question of whether this is something unique to Covid itself (and it is the Covid virus that triggers these symptoms) or whether this could be part of a general postviral syndrome,” said Navis, who added that experts doctors see a similar time-term 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 muscle fatigue or weakness, sleep difficulties, and anxiety or depression were common, even 6 months after the onset of symptoms,” the researchers wrote in the study.
They noted that the symptoms reported months after someone’s diagnosis of Covid-19 were 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 large medical centers are setting up post-covide clinics to help care for patients with persistent symptoms. Navis said his clinic in Mount Sinai, New York City, has treated a “fairly uniform” distribution of men and women suffering from persistent illnesses and that the average age of patients is 40, he said. .
Dr. Kathleen Bell, a professor at Southwestern Medical Center at the University of Texas, said the long-term Covid-19 clinic at her hospital began last April when a wave of infections affected Italy and New York. at the beginning of the pandemic.
Bell, speaking Friday to the Society for Infectious Diseases of America, said a number of professionals are needed to attend clinics as symptoms are uneven, including experts who can treat muscle weakness, heart-related illnesses and cognitive problems for those suffering from mental health problems after their diagnosis.
“It really, in many ways, forces us to come together and make sure we have open lines of communication to address all of these issues for patients,” Bell said.
Bell added that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention organized a call with long Covid centers across the country in January to discuss their patient treatment model.
“I think now CDC is trying to bring the centers together and get some firmer guidelines for that, which is very exciting,” Bell said.
– CNBC Sam Meredith has contributed to this report.