Researches are continuing to learn more about post-COVID syndrome. Also known as long-haul COVID-19 or long COVID-19, it involves a wide range of health problems that occur for many weeks, months or even years after recovering from COVID-19.
Most experts agree that long-haul COVID-19 is not rare and occurs in at least 10%–20% of people who have had COVID-19.
Speaking to Chad Hartman on WCCO Radio Thursday Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said that he has been frustrated that long-haul COVID hasn’t been getting more attention from the medical community.
“I want to be honest and just say, I am really frustrated with this issue of long COVID,” says Osterholm. “The NIH (National Institutes of Health) received substantial support to begin a study and carry it out to look at long COVID. And this was over a year ago. With over 40,000 people that are supposed to be in the study, they only enrolled about 4% of that number. I don't know what in the hell is going on there, but we need clearly much more work in long COVID. We need to address it head on.”
On April 5, the White House released a memo directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to coordinate “a new effort across the federal government to develop and issue the first-ever interagency national research action plan on Long COVID.”
Osterholm said that this is a good first step and something that has to get accelerated.
“The president did state several weeks ago that this was now a really a major new priority, and I think has energized this issue,” says Osterholm. “But, we owe it to the people who are long COVID sufferers. We owe it to the economy, the country. If we have 20% of many people who are unable to work or have a life of brain fog and pain suffering, think what that does to our overall lives, as we know them. Or our economy.”
According to Mayo Clinic, the two most common symptoms are shortness of breath and fatigue.
"The fatigue that we see is not a normal fatigue,” says Dr. Greg Vanichkachorn, a Mayo Clinic occupational medicine specialist. “It is quite profound. Patients will often say things like that they will take out their trash or go for a walk with their dog for about a block and then have to take a nap for three to four hours or even be tired for days afterward.”
Osterholm says to fully understand the long term issues associated with having COVID, we need money, and that money needs to go into research.
“So this is one again, penny wise and pound foolish,” Osterholm tells WCCO. “We've got to invest much more. We've got to do it quickly. This is not something we can take ten years to do. We have real questions and real needs to know about what can we do.”
There are too many unanswered questions says Osterholm.
“Number one, what protects against long COVID? Are there things we can do? Number two is if you have long COVID, is it one kind of a condition that a common treatment will impact? I don't think that's the case, but then therefore, what are all the different manifestations. Is the brain fog equivalent to the problems you see in the lungs and the heart? And so there's a lot we need to do and we're not doing it. I hope that changes.”
Related
