Long COVID

Reading the medical literature – that is, articles reporting studies of various aspects of health and disease – can be enlightening.  It’s how we docs keep up with new knowledge and progress, after all, but it can also be frustrating – for ex

Are there symptoms associated with what is being called Long COVID, unique for the long-term effects of this specific viral infection? Or can it follow any viral infection or no infection at all?

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has evolved continually, and sometimes drastically, since the appearance of the original “Wuhan strain” three years ago.

Let’s get the caveats out of the way. The data is from Chinese patients early in the pandemic, January to May 2020. China is not known to be forthcoming with data, and there is great suspicion regarding the numbers they do release.

A recent study in JAMA Network Open sough

Of course, the downside with relying on naturally acquired immunity (and forgoing vaccination) – is that you must first get COVID. But now that there’s Paxlovid, who cares? Right?

Increasing concerns about long-haul COVID (LHC) have appeared in the popular press but less frequently in the medical literature. The PubMed database lists 32,922 review papers on COVID-19 but only 196 on LHC.

Donald Rumsfeld, the two-time secretary of defense (Gerald Ford and George W.

A bit of background

  “Current trends indicate that long-haul COVID is our next public health disaster in the making” What is long-haul COVID?