Critical care workers place an endotracheal tube in a positive patient in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Florida, February 11, 2021.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Some Covid-19 patients experience 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 better diagnose and treat them for what they tentatively call ‘long Covid’.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organization hosted a global meeting with ‘patients, clinicians and other stakeholders’ to promote the agency’s understanding of what is medically called a post-Covid condition, also known as Long Covid, Director General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Said Friday.
The event was the first of many to come. The goal is to eventually create an “agreed clinical description” of the condition so doctors can diagnose patients and treat them effectively, he said. Given the number of people worldwide infected with the virus (nearly 108 million people as of Friday), Tedros warned that many people will experience these persistent symptoms.
“This disease affects patients with severe and mild Covid-19,” Tedros told a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. “Part of the challenge is that patients with a long Covid may have different symptoms that may be persistent or may come and go.”
Limited data
So far, there are a limited number of studies that distinguish what the most common long-covid symptoms are or how long they can last. Most focus was on people with a serious or fatal illness, not those who recovered but still had persistent side effects, sometimes called ‘long-term carriers’.
Most Covid patients are likely to recover only a few weeks after their initial diagnosis, but some have experienced symptoms for six months or even nearly a year, medical experts say.
One of the largest global studies of long covid published in early January found that many people suffering from persistent illness after infection could not return at full capacity six months later. The study, published on MedRxiv and not peer-reviewed, surveyed more than 3,700 people aged 18 to 80 from 56 countries to identify the symptoms.
The study found that the symptoms that occur frequently after six months were fatigue, fatigue after exercise and cognitive dysfunction.
Is it unique to Covid-19?
“We really do not know what causes these symptoms. This is currently a major focus of research,” said Dr. Allison Navis, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine on Mount Sinai, during a call with the Infectious Diseases Society of America on Friday.
“There is a question as to whether it is something unique to Covid itself – and that it is the Covid virus that is causing these symptoms – or whether it may be part of a common post-viral syndrome,” Navis said. -terminal symptoms after other viral infections.
Another study, published in early January in the medical journal The Lancet, studied 1,733 patients discharged from a hospital in Wuhan, China, between January and May last year. Of the patients, 76% reported at least one symptom six months after their initial illness. The percentage was higher in women.
“We found that fatigue or muscle weakness, sleep problems and anxiety or depression were common, even 6 months after the onset of the symptom,” researchers wrote in the study.
They noted that the symptoms reported months after a person’s Covid-19 diagnosis were consistent with the data previously found in follow-up studies of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which is also a coronavirus.
Post-Covid clinics come online
Some major medical centers are now creating clinics after Covid that help care for patients with persistent symptoms. Navis said her clinic on Mount Sinai in New York treats a ‘reasonable’ distribution of men and women experiencing persistent illness, and that the average patient age is 40, she said.
Dr. Kathleen Bell, a professor at the University of Texas, said the hospital’s long-term clinic Covid-19 began in April when a spate of infections hit Italy and New York early in the pandemic.
Bell, speaking on Friday about the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said a variety of professionals should staff the clinics as the symptoms are uneven, including experts who can treat muscle weakness, heart-related illnesses and cognitive problems for those who feel mentally ill. health problems after their diagnosis.
“It forces us in a lot of ways to get everyone together and to make sure we have an open line of communication to address all of these issues for patients,” Bell said.
Bell added that in January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hosted a call with long-running Covid centers across the country to discuss their model for treating patients.
“I do think the CDC is now trying to pull centers together and get some more guidelines for this, which is very exciting,” Bell said.
– CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report.