In April 2020, because of the overwhelming number of patients we had, I was pulled from my regular duties as a neurologist and asked to take care of patients on a COVID-19 unit in the hospital. Morsa Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images People hospitalized with COVID-19 have a far greater chance of developing long COVID-19. Some studies show that among people hospitalized for COVID-19, up to 63% continued to have symptoms – specifically fatigue or muscle weakness – six months later. Some data suggests 4.5% of people infected with COVID-19, or about 1 in 22, will have symptoms beyond eight weeks post-COVID, while other studies point to closer to 49%. Long COVID-19 often involves a constellation of symptoms affecting many parts of the body, but the most commonly reported are fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pains, cognitive changes, headaches, sensory changes and pain.Ī year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, it remains unclear how many people are affected by long COVID-19. While we have yet to determine a precise definition for long COVID-19, we typically consider it the persistence or development of new symptoms that last more than four weeks after COVID-19 recovery. This woman was coming in to see me, a neurologist specializing in infectious diseases, for symptoms that we physicians now all-too-commonly know as long, or long-haul, COVID-19. She reported having daily headaches, numbness and tingling in her legs, and difficulty with memory, which had affected her work. She also noticed her heart was racing whenever she walked around. Now, 13 months later, she noted that she still felt fatigued and short of breath. My first patient that day was a woman in her early 40s, an avid marathon runner who had contracted COVID-19 in March 2020.
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