There has been a lot of focus on deaths related to COVID-19 but recently we have also been learning more about the degree of ongoing health problems in some of the survivors.
Thread on Long COVID 1/9
Thread on Long COVID 1/9
We are now aware that a proportion of patients have ongoing symptoms for longer than expected and are labelling this ‘long COVID’ when it persists for at least several months.
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Some healthcare facilities have been setting up clinics for these people to try to understand better their symptoms and also gradually to learn how we can manage them.
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Common problems in this group include fatigue, breathlessness, chest pain, fevers, aches & inability to concentrate. This is not limited to the people who got sick enough to require hospital admission & even occurs in those whose initial infection would be described as mild.
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We have only first learnt about this virus about nine months ago and we still have plenty more to learn.
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We do expect that there will be a substantial rise in heart attacks and strokes in the next one to two years, as they are always increased following illnesses that cause substantial inflammation (like influenza, pneumonia or septicaemia).
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We don’t know if there will be an increase in health probs related to blood clotting, kidney function or immune system abnormalities. We don’t know with certainty what will happen when the people who've had it once get re-exposed next year when virus has had time to mutate
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The attached three-minute recording is from someone I have been seeing who had COVID more than five months ago. He is only 39 years old and had no pre-existing medical problems.
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He is someone we would all consider low risk, yet his health is still a long way from being back to normal. This can be a really horrible illness even in those who survive it.
soundcloud.com/user-181626429…
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soundcloud.com/user-181626429…
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