PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Up to 10 percent of people who get COVID-19 will still experience symptoms more than three months after testing negative. They are considered long-haulers — people whose symptoms outlast the illness.
And, those symptoms can vary vastly, according to Dr. Benjamin Abramoff, director of the Post-COVID Assessment and Recovery Clinic at Penn Medicine.
"Some patients have very mild, ongoing symptoms and some have severe, debilitating, ongoing symptoms," he said. "They vary in a large range of organ systems. So some patients have cognitive, psychological issues, others have much more cardiopulmonary with persistent shortness of breath. It's a wide gamut of ongoing symptoms."
He said there is no one curative treatment. Symptoms are addressed one by one, often with physical therapy.
But, there is good news: Many of the symptoms improve over time.
"One of the most common ongoing symptoms following COVID is persistent fatigue," said Abramoff, "and this can last for months. For these patients, we make sure there's nothing else going on — so, are they having insomnia, which is very common. Or, is their sleep-wake cycle impaired, so they're sleeping during the day and they can't sleep at night."
There are very few of these clinics nationwide, so demand is high and growing by the day.
