Why Should We Care About COVID-19 in the Long-term?
If you believe the only benefits of vaccines’ are minimizing illness severity and reducing mortality, then consider the following:
A colleague of mine had acute COVID in March 2020. Fortunately, she was not seriously ill during the most intense phase of the acute disease. Unfortunately, however, the virus has left its mark on her.
That particular coronavirus has warped her sense of smell in a way she cannot tell apart her favorite perfume. She has no choice but to rely on close friends to tell her that it still smells the same to them. While writing this article, she has not yet fully recovered her sense of smell until this day.
Just like my colleague, so many people share frustration or continuous yearning for relief and escape on social media:
“This is the second tomato season where I cannot taste tomatoes, and if that’s not reason enough to go get vaccinated, I do not know what is.”
“Grant me strength when the world makes me so tired. #LongCovid 18 months.”
As recorded in the literature, a doctor’s account: “Two days ago I couldn’t remember the word brain. I described it as a thing that was like a blancmange in your head, the weirdest thing, these words just fall out of your head, and I get very worried about going back to work.”
These are the so-called long COVID, long-haul COVID, post-acute COVID-19, long-term effects of COVID, chronic COVID syndrome, or chronic COVID.
To keep it simple in this article, let’s call things as follows:
- Acute COVID — The most intense symptoms; generally occur a couple of weeks after infection and can take up to 12 weeks to resolve.
- Chronic COVID — The ongoing health problems that start four or more weeks after a person is first infected.
Why do people get chronic COVID?
Researchers are still working hard on answering this question. However, there are three leading hypotheses:
• The infection makes some people’s immune systems exhibit an excessive reaction, attacking both virus and the body’s tissues — this could help explain some of the autoimmune-related symptoms.
• During infection, some virus enters cells and damages them; this could occur in brain and blood vessel cells, which could explain long-term heart, lung, and brain problems.
• The virus may remain in the body in a dormant form and can reactivate after weeks, months, or years — evidence of this is still insufficient.
What Does Chronic COVID Do to People’s Health?
Researchers have identified an alarming multitude of symptoms related to COVID that can affect practically any organ system in the long term. Below are some of the most common, and a complete list is in the figure:
Ongoing respiratory symptoms — Chronic cough, difficulty breathing, fatigue, low oxygen levels with or without physical effort — May affect about 150 to 500 in 1000 cases.
Ongoing cardiovascular effects — elevated heart rate, palpitations, chest tightness, or chest pain — Impact estimates at about 140 to 200 in 1000 cases.
Ongoing neurological symptoms — cognitive impairment, headaches, sleep disturbance, sensations of pins and needles, numbness — about 300 in 1000 cases.
Multiorgan effects — affect most, if not all, body systems, including heart, lung, kidney, skin, and brain functions — about 200 to 600 in 1000 cases.
Autoimmune conditions — Immune cells battled infected human cells serving as hosts to the virus to produce more virus particles. Thus, the immune system changed so that it, from then on, misidentifies the human cells as invaders and attacks healthy cells in your body. Another possibility is that the antibodies produced to combat coronavirus also attach to healthy human cells — about 100 in 1000 cases.
Other long-term effects — the context of the COVID-19 pandemic as a whole can substantially block regaining quality of life due to mental health effects from isolation, negative economic situations, and lack of access to healthcare. Check our other related article on COVID-19 related cough stigma to review some of the psychological impacts the population is facing.
Who can get Chronic COVID?
Anyone is at risk of suffering from chronic COVID. Even people that weren’t very ill during acute COVID in the first place can have long-term problems from COVID.
Although doctors have only just started recording it as an official diagnosis, it seems likely that Chronic COVID becomes increasingly likely with age and is twice as common among women.
So Chronic COVID is a Thing, Now What?
As outlined in this article, surviving acute COVID is not the whole story: many COVID-19 survivors do not completely recover their health. They cannot regain their previous quality of life. Instead, they deal with a host of ongoing symptoms and debilitation.
Additionally, testing is either:
- Reliable but takes too long to provide results (namely PCR), failing to catch up to the spread of this coronavirus, or
- Quick but may result in false-negative results (namely antigen testing), as we’ve previously discussed in this article.
Nowadays, with the vaccines being thankfully available, these symptoms could be prevented or at least minimized.
If you are hesitant to get vaccinated, please reconsider. Covid-19 acute and chronic diseases are no joke, and it is really better to be safe than to be sorry.
Author: Rogério M. — Linkedin
Rogério collaborates with healthcare professionals, artists, and software developers to deliver the best possible science communication content. Background: Biochemistry
References
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