According to the World Health Organization (WHO), long Covid is the postcovid-19 condition in which a person who was infected with SARS-CoV-2 has persistent symptoms for 3 months after initial infection. In the same vein, WHO estimates that between 10% and 20% of Covid-19 patients experienced long covid illness.
Related to this issue, physicians at Houston Methodist Hospital conducted research in which they detected more than 50 long-standing covid effects in 47,910 patients, which they revealed to NotiPress. The most common of these persistent symptoms ranged from mild to debilitating and lasted from weeks to months after initial recovery from the new coronavirus. As a result, the main ones were fatigue at 58 percent, followed by headache at 44 percent and attention disorder at 27 percent. Similarly, hair loss was recorded at 25%, difficulty breathing at 24%, while loss of taste at 23% and loss of smell at 21%.
It is important to mention that other symptoms that make up the long covid were related to pulmonary conditions such as cough, chest discomfort, sleep apnea and pulmonary fibrosis. Likewise, arrhythmias and myocarditis, tinnitus and night sweats are part of the effects of long covid. The researchers were surprised to find a prevalence of neurological symptoms including dementia, depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
Dr. Sonia Villapol, professor of neurosurgery at Houston Methodist Hospital, was the leader of the research, which included a scientific review of 15 international studies. Similarly, the physicians collected information from patient self-surveys and medical records with a post-Covid-19 follow-up time ranging from 14 to 110 days. Notably, individuals hospitalized with the new coronavirus accounted for 40% of the studies and the remainder followed a mix of Covid-19 individuals with mild, moderate and severe symptoms.
In the same consonance, the research team found 80% of recovered adults had at least one long-term symptom lasting weeks or months after acute infection with Covid-19. Finally, the physicians concluded there were 55 persistent symptoms, signs and abnormal laboratory results, thereby confirming to the researchers that long-standing covid is substantial.
Finally, by identifying, recognizing the symptoms of long covid and reporting its prevalence and rate of occurrence, strategies can be defined to avoid the consequences of long covid. For this reason, it is important that the vaccination campaign is carried out in all countries where there is contagion and that people are vaccinated and continue to comply with health regulations.
