There will need to be separate diagnostic criteria for long-COVID sufferers and for those who recover from COVID and have long-lasting secondary effects... this will require new drugs and biologics to rejuvenate damaged tissues, not just manage viral load.
Additionally, edge cases which will be increasingly more common e.g., autoimmunity (whether precipitated by COVID or pre-existing and exacerbated) — will require new looks at autoimmune dampening strategies.
It would be a bad move to simply continue classifying COVID as a binary outcome of survival vs. death, and hospitalization or not. Our entire healthcare system needs to be revamped to prioritize improving people’s health and preventing chronic conditions, not just treating them.
With 10 organ systems affected and more than 200 symptoms presenting among COVID sufferers, the rush to sweep the pandemic under the rug in light of vaccination while tens of millions of people have been infected in US alone may be this generation’s greatest public health threat.
We somehow are forgetting about long-term damage of this virus...
https://twitter.com/nanogenomic/status/1276327144495480839
This is not a good time to deprioritize the development of therapeutics. We need everything we’ve got to combat latent and long-COVID infections as well as acute infections and persistent health issues in people recovering / recovered from COVID. Regenerative medicine is needed.
And, the emphasis on drug development should not just be on addressing the needs of hospitalized patients. Clinical trials and treatment protocols should evolve to enroll and support minimal need for clinical oversight during drug administration (e.g. IV vs. other MOAs).
Of course this is different in early safety studies with certain compounds, but as medicine evolves so will its precision and minimization of side effects.
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