NEW YORK (AP) – COVID-19 arrived early on Catherine Busa, and never left.
The 54-year-old New York City school secretary had no underlying health issues when she caught the coronavirus in March and recovered from her Queens home.
But some symptoms persisted: fatigue he never experienced for years from getting up at 5 in the morning to work; pain, especially in the hands and wrists; an altered sense of taste and smell that made food unattractive; and a well depression. After eight months of suffering, he was referred to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, a specific clinic for post-COVID-19 care.
“I felt like I was in a kind of hole and I couldn’t look on the bright side,” Busa said. She did not feel helped by visits to other doctors. But in the clinic it was different.
“They validated my way of feeling,” he said. “That has helped me push through everything I’m struggling with.”
The clinic is one of dozens of such facilities that have sprung up in the United States to address a puzzling aspect of COVID-19: the effects that can stubbornly affect some people weeks or months after the infection has subsided.
Program approaches vary, but they share the goal of trying to understand, treat, and give credibility to patients who can’t get rid of the virus that has infected more than 24 million Americans and killed about 400,000.
“We know this is real,” said Dr. Alan Roth, who oversees the Jamaica Hospital clinic. He has been dealing with body aches, fatigue and “brain fog” characterized by occasional forgetfulness since his own relatively mild attack with COVID-19 in March.
Like so many other things in the pandemic, the scientific image of so-called long carriers is still in development. It is unclear to what extent long-term COVID problems prevail or why some patients continue to suffer while others do not.
Current indications indicate that up to 30% of patients continue to have significant problems that are introduced into daily life two to three weeks after giving a positive. Perhaps up to 10 percent are still affected three to six months later, according to Dr. Wesley Self, a Vanderbilt University emergency physician and researcher who wrote a July report. of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Doctors have known for months that intensive care patients can face prolonged recoveries. But many long-haul COVID-19 carriers were never critically ill.
At the University of Texas post-COVID-19 clinic in Clear Lake, patients were between 23 and 90 years old. Half were never hospitalized, said the clinic’s director, Dr. Justin Seashore.
“They were told they should feel better, and they didn’t,” he said. Instead, they were left with fatigue, difficulty breathing, anxiety, depression, difficulty concentrating, or other problems they didn’t have before.
Some were told they should be oxygenated for the rest of their lives. A highlight has been helping many of them achieve this through a treatment that can include respiratory therapy, occupational therapy, mental health checks and more, Seashore said.
COVID-19’s long-term care has been launched in settings ranging from large research hospitals such as New York’s Mount Sinai, which has more than 1,600 patients, to St. John’s Well Child and Family Center, a network of community clinics in South Los Angeles.
Instead of focusing specifically on patients who are still feeling unwell, St. John’s plans to schedule a physical exam, a behavioral health visit and monthly follow-ups with everyone who tests positive at any of its clinics, CEO Jim Mangia said. About 1,000 patients have been screened.
Since Luciana Flores contracted the virus in June, she has been battling back pain, stomach problems, shortness of breath and worry. The mother of three lost her job at a laundromat in the middle of the pandemic and doesn’t feel well enough to look for work.
St. John’s has helped, he said, diagnosing and treating a bacterial infection in his digestive system.
“I think it’s very important that other patients get the same care,” Flores, 38, said through a Spanish interpreter. “I do not feel the same. I don’t think anything is the same, but there is no other way to solve it: I have to keep moving forward. “
There is no proven cure for long-term COVID problems. But clinics aim to offer relief, especially to give patients a place to turn if their regular doctor can’t help.
“We wanted to create a place where patients could get answers or feel heard,” even if there are still unanswered questions, said Dr. Denyse Lutchmansingh, chief clinical physician at Yale Medicine’s post-COVID recovery program. .
In the Jamaica Hospital program, patients receive mental health assessments, care from a lung specialist, and physical exams that delve deeper than most into their lifestyles, personal circumstances, and sources of stress. So far, several hundred people have been treated, Roth said.
The idea is to help patients “build their own healing capacity,” Dr. Wayne Jonas, former director of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. He is now with the Samueli Foundation, a California-based nonprofit that works with the hospital to combine alternative ideas with conventional medicine.
Long-haul carriers perform exercise and diet plans and group or individual mental health sessions. Supplements, breathing exercises, and meditation are also likely to be recommended. This is in addition to any primary care prescriptions, referrals, or follow-ups that are deemed necessary.
“We don’t just say, ‘It’s all in your head and we’ll throw you herbs and spices,'” Roth said, “without a proven and orderly response to the symptom complex. to treat these people. “
Busa got a test that determined she has sleep apnea, which causes people to stop breathing while sleeping and often feel tired when she is awake. He is getting a device for this and uses wrist sticks and injects himself to relieve the pain. Her program also includes psychotherapy appointments, supplements, and new daily routines of walking, riding a stationary bike, and writing in a journal about what to be thankful for.
Busa feels that he is approaching, especially in terms of his mood, and accredits the clinic.
“There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” he said, “and there are people and doctors who can relate to you.”