Long COVID is a condition whereby people continue to experience some symptoms, after even after the infection has passed. Scientists at National Institute for Health Research, University of Oxford, and Oxford Health Biomedical Research Center have regrouped. This was after they studied symptoms in more than 270,000 people recovering from COVID-19. And they concluded Long COVID might be more extensive than science initially thought.
Why Do Scientists Appear to Keep Changing Their Minds?
COVID-19 is a disease that affects our bodies and our states of mind. Experimenting with humans is unethical. Therefore, we can only watch it from outside, see how symptoms develop and treat them as best we can. Scientists don’t change their minds. Their knowledge evolves as time passes by.
The team examined medical records of over 270,000 people recovering from COVID infections. They found one in three suffered symptoms for three to six months after becoming infected. And the likelihood of Long COVID was more extensive among women, and those taken to hospital for treatment.
How Severe is Long COVID, What Does it Feel Like?
The commonest complaints include breathing problems, abdominal pain, changes of bowel habit and diarrhea, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and pain. But the condition affects a significant proportion of people of all ages, according to Dr. Max Taquet.
He is an academic clinical fellow at National Institute for Health Research, and co-author of the report. The study does not explain what causes Long COVID. It simply dispassionately discloses the facts.
If Long COVID Is More Extensive, Where Do We Go From Here
There’s no evidence of a cure as such. Doctors can only treat the symptoms and hope for the best. The study found older people and men more likely to have breathing problems, and conscious intellectual difficulties.
Whereas young people and women complained more about headaches, anxiety, abdominal symptoms, and depression.
This study teaches us that that COVID-19 is a disease that affects males and females and, young and old alike. Although it does seem young people may only feel the effects after their first infection has passed.
Our defense is therefore avoiding the infection and not spreading it to other people. And vaccinating people of all ages, to stop the disease at its source.
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