Long-term effects of COVID-19 defined as ‘Long Covid’ –by DR Harold Gunatillake
A situation where people contracting COVID has ongoing symptoms 4 weeks or more after the start of acute COVID-19.
This is a story of living with Long-COVID, creating significant pressures of persons and their families
A growing number of people who recover from COVID-19 are experiencing long-term health problems. This includes younger patients without pre-existing conditions who had only mild symptoms with the virus.
The prevalence of this “long Covid’ is a drawn-out form of the disease, which lasts for months or years. It is now called post-covid syndrome.
Majority of the unvaccinated people who contract COVID-19 recover with minimal side effects, recovering fast, but a significant number have had long-term problems after recovering from the original infection, even if they were not ill at the onset. Recovery time varies, but in the majority resolves within 12 weeks.
If the symptoms continue after 12 weeks after management in hospital or home, Long COVID is then suspected, and symptomatic medication is carried out.
Do not confuse this group of symptoms with those who get side effects after the vaccine roll out.
Vast majorities in most countries have not completed giving the first jab, and some of them are in the hesitant group: they are the candidates that end up with Long Covid after the infection. These symptoms last over 12 weeks, even up to a year in most cases.
This seems to be a new disease facing the possibility of another urgent public health emergency, a situation that some people after COVID-19 infection, without complete remission, into a group of symptoms that last long after the initial infection.
What is known is that vaccinated people, some of them have symptoms like headache, breathlessness within a few hours after the jab from which they recover spontaneously. Of course, the worst situations to dread are when you get cerebrovascular thrombosis with low platelet counts and rapid heartbeat (tachycardia) due to acute inflammation of the heart.
A few have died from these severe side effects-post vaccination.
The long COVID group of symptoms do not fit into the normal pattern of side effects described, but it is observed that some cases having contracted the disease and recovered come back within three months of their apparent recovery with severe symptoms, and one in ten will die.
Diagnosing the disease is not straightforward because the symptoms of various illnesses overlap, as it can affect any system in the body and what tests to perform to diagnose like other diseases is not definitive.
“Scientists all over the world are working at an unprecedented rate towards understanding how this virus specifically hijacks biological mechanisms of the human body that are normally protective. We hope that our review will be a comprehensive resource for physicians, nurses and other health care workers caring for patients with COVID-19, and provide impetus to consideration of all organ systems involved while developing research priorities and therapeutic strategies.”said Kartik Sehgal, MD, co-lead author, hematology/oncology fellow in the Cancer Center at BIDMC
It is now believed that long Covid is a multisystem disease.
Aakriti Gupta MD from Columbia cardiology said,” “There’s a lot of news about clotting but it’s also important to understand that a substantial proportion of these patients suffer kidney, heart, and brain damage.”
According to The National Health Services Directory NHSD, in Australia-symptoms include- extreme tiredness; shortness of breath, heart palpitations due to inflammation of the heart muscle, chest pain or tightness; problems with memory and concentration (“brain fog”), changes to taste, smell and joint pain, and post-exertional malaise.
Other symptoms include visual hallucinations, tremors, itchy skin, changes to the menstrual cycle, sexual dysfunction, bladder control issues, blurred vision, diarrhea and tinnitus.
Research is learning more about why some people who get a mild case of COVID-19 end up experiencing other symptoms for months, known as “long -haulers”. Doctors say they often have symptoms that resemble a common blood circulation disorder known as POTS.
These are a few symptoms, but there are more than 200 symptoms of Long COVID, and the symptoms may last as much as eight months.
According to the Office for National Statistics, 962,000 Britons are now suffering from it, and 385,000 are suffering over one year.
Long term impact of COVID-19 is still not known. Till now, the focus was on producing vaccines hoping to combat and minimize the endemic. Vaccines have not been up to expectations like the other previous vaccines like the tetanus, whooping cough, tetanus and so on, because the adapted immunity is short -lived and frequent boosters may be required to keep the memory B cells at optimal levels in the body.
Over that long COVID is becoming a bigger issue, and science cannot still find out the causes and measures to take to alleviate the suffering of the victims.
Healthcare professionals are researching long-term complications of SARS-CoV-2 infections, including symptoms lingering for months after the person’s initial infection with the COVID-19 infection.
The National Health Services Directory- It was believed that children will not be affected with the disease, but now it appears that they too can contract the disease, and some there is emerging evidence that, like adults, they are too at risk of getting long COVID.
the National Statistics in the UK, estimates that around 13%-15% of children with COVID-19 have symptoms lasting long periods, extending even to months. In a recent pre-print from Italy, suggests that more than half of children with COVID-19 have at least one persisting symptom over 17 weeks after the diagnosis.
Significant numbers of people are enduring the condition—and some may never recover.
It is astounding to see the significant ramifications this virus had on all systems of the body, and the suffering and the pain of patients who are afflicted by it.
Hope this video talk was useful.
Do not be discriminatory about which vaccine to take. All vaccines are presently effective, but in the future with more virulent variants, mRNA vaccines score, because the researchers can modify those vaccine within a few weeks to attack the variants.
Until we see each again, Goodbye for now.
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