The risks of ‘long covid’ are devastating, especially for those with underlying health problems – it kills thousands of people – RT Op-ed

The new article by British researchers and government statistics delivers a sobering message that the way out of the hospital may not be the end of business for Covid-19 patients. If we look at patients who were discharged from hospital during the first wave in England, almost a third ended up in hospital and one in eight died.

The study followed 47,780 people who were hospitalized in England with the virus and subsequently discharged, which was 80 per cent of those who were hospitalized and survived during the study period (until 31 August 2020).

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The most important results were that 29.4 percent of the discharged were later admitted to the hospital and that 12.3 percent died. An obvious question is whether it was old people who would get sick anyway for other reasons. The study found that those in the hospital with Covid-19 were more likely to be 50 years or older, men, in a disadvantaged area, a former smoker and overweight or obese; they were also more likely to be comorbid than the general population, with a higher incidence of previous hospitalization and all measured against pre-existing conditions (especially hypertension, cardiovascular problems, respiratory diseases, and diabetes).

When the patients were paired with similar people in the broader population who had never had the disease, these patients after Covid were 3.5 times more likely to be admitted to the hospital and 7.7 times more likely to die.

Covid-19 is a particularly nasty disease, point, and is especially deadly for those with underlying medical problems because it causes the immune system to attack the patient’s organs. The phenomenon of the ‘cytokine storm’ received a lot of attention early in the pandemic, as patients who looked good suddenly fell into a catastrophic downturn as their immune systems got out of control.

In December, a Yale University study found that ‘car bodywas a major problem in Covid patients. As the Guardian reports: “The scientists compared immune responses in patients and non-infected people and discovered numerous aberrant antibodies in the former. These blocked antiviral defenses, wiped out useful immune cells and attacked the body on several fronts, from the brain, blood vessels and liver to connective tissue and the digestive tract.. ”

The new research led by Kamlesh Khunti, professor of primary care diabetes and vascular medicine at Leicester University, found something surprising: while those who were most seriously ill with Covid-19, those who needed intensive care, a greater number of post-post-years experienced. absence of respiratory diseases and diabetes, mortality rates, readmission and serious adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) were worse in those who were not yet in intensive care. In other words, it was not just a case of people having the worst initial illnesses that had the worst results in the long run.

Perhaps also surprisingly, although people over 70 were more likely to have problems after discharge, Covid has long had a greater impact on people under 70 compared to their usual disease risk (the average age of those in the study was 65)

Since this is an observational study, the old saying goes that ‘correlation does not equal causality‘applicable. As noted in the newspaper, people who are already on the road to problems such as diabetes and heart disease are more likely to end up in hospital than those who have better underlying health.

The research also did not look at those who were not sick enough with Covid-19 to be admitted to the hospital. Research published earlier this month indicates that 12.4 million people in England had Covid, of which 300,000 needed hospital treatment – about 2.5 percent. In general, we are probably looking at about 0.75 percent of the population that has been re-admitted thanks to the long Covid. It is said that there have also been non-hospitalized problems with multiple organs, so there is little room for complacency.

Another new study concluded that how quickly a patient’s immune system responds to infection with Covid plays an important role in determining the severity of the attack, and that it may play a role in recurrence. thereof.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge studied 207 people who tested positive for the virus over a three-month period and found that people without symptoms or mild cases had a strong immune response shortly after being infected. But those in need of hospitalization had a diminished immune response, leading to a delayed and weakened attempt to fight the virus.

The main message of these findings is that we urgently need to investigate more fully the full impact of post-Covid syndrome (PCS), to improve treatment and to assess the future impact on health services.

One idea that will be worth pursuing is whether the damage is done during the time people feel sick with Covid-19 and whether it continues after they appear to have recovered. If it is the latter, treatment to suppress these autoimmune effects may need to continue in some form for weeks or months thereafter.

What is clear is that so-called ‘lank Covid‘s more than just feeling sick longer than you would expect. The effects of the disease, especially in the way it moves the immune system to damage organ tissues, can be very serious and some patients never get over it. At the very least, we need to have a way to monitor patients with Covid-19 after they recover so that we can look into these issues and plan for the extra demands they can make on health services.

It may also make us reconsider how many people died from Covid-19. If someone first leaves the hospital to die weeks or months later due to organ damage caused by the disease, we should probably consider them as Covid deaths as well. The main measure is currently ‘deaths due to any cause within 28 days after a positive test’. This measure is likely to ignore some deaths to be counted, and may also include deaths that were entirely from a different cause. Death certificates are better, but have their own problems. It will be difficult to get a more accurate picture, but it is still important.

Some will no doubt use this paper as further ammunition to promote locks. But while it may change the balance between the benefits and costs of restrictions, the fact remains that the cost of locking is still not sufficiently emphasized. The focus remains myopic on reducing the number of infections. But while some measures have a major impact at relatively low costs, such as banning large indoor gatherings or bothering us to avoid overcrowded spaces, some have reasonable benefits and large costs, such as closing schools.

Above all, this new research highlights the need to get started with vaccination programs as soon as possible. No stone should be left untouched to get everyone vaccinated as soon as possible. Then we can leave this mess behind once and for all.

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