The Science Behind Long-COVID: 9 Biological Explanations
And what now?
A syndrome is a collection of symptoms of unclear causes, which is different from a disease with a defined set of symptoms and a cause. For example, coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) is a disease of the lower respiratory tract that’s caused by a virus called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In contrast, long-COVID is a syndrome involving multiple organ systems and biological causes.
Despite being a syndrome, long-COVID is very real. Survivors of Covid-19, regardless of initial disease severity, do indeed face more long-term health issues than non-survivors.
How common is it?
The latest data (as of 1st August 2021) from the U.K. Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that 3% of people who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 experienced at least one continuous symptom at 12–16 weeks after infection. If only symptomatic cases are counted, this percentage is 6.7%. And this percentage is only 0.5% in the control group who had never been tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
The 12 symptoms the ONS investigated were fever, headache, muscle ache, weakness or tiredness, nausea or vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, sore throat, cough, shortness of breath, loss of taste, and loss of smell…
