With nearly 200 million people known to possess had Covid-19, the WHO said Wednesday it had been deeply concerned by the unknown numbers who should be suffering from Long Covid.
The World Health Organization urged people battling the after-effects of the virus — despite having recovered from the acute phase — to hunt for medical help.
Long Covid remains one of the foremost mysterious aspects of the pandemic.
“This post-Covid syndrome, or Long Covid, are some things that WHO is deeply concerned about,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the UN health agency’s Covid-19 technical lead, told a news conference.
The WHO was “making sure that we’ve recognition of this because this is often real”.
She said of those infected with SARS-CoV-2 — the virus which causes Covid-19 disease — “many are affected by future effects”.
“We do not know for a way long these effects last and we’re even performing on a case definition to raised understand and describe what this post-Covid syndrome is,” said Van Kerkhove.
She said the WHO was working to possess better rehabilitation programs for Long Covid sufferers plus broader research to realize a far better understanding of what the syndrome is and the way it is often managed.
– quite 200 symptoms –
The WHO has held a series of seminars this year aimed toward expanding understanding of post-Covid conditions, hearing not only from scientists and doctors but also directly from sufferers themselves.
Little is understood about why some people, after coming through the acute phase, struggle to recover and suffer ongoing symptoms including shortness of breath, extreme fatigue, and brain fog also as cardiac and neurological disorders.
Janet Diaz, the clinical care lead within the WHO’s emergencies program who leads the organization’s Long Covid efforts, said there had been quite 200 reported symptoms.
They include pain, tingling, and rashes, she told a WHO live social media session on Tuesday.
Diaz said some patients had symptoms that dragged on from the acute phase; others got better then relapsed, with conditions that would come and go; while others had symptoms that only appeared after recovering from the acute phase.
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Studies can only return as far because the first patients to get over Covid-19, which first emerged in China in December 2019.
Diaz said some people appeared to have post-Covid conditions for 3 months, et al. up to 6 months.
“We are concerned there could also be a little proportion that continues to nine months — and to longer than that,” said Diaz.
The US expert said it had been not yet fully understood what caused the post-viral symptoms, with various hypotheses including neurological problems, the immune reaction to the infection, and therefore the virus persisting in some organs.
Van Kerkhove said: “We advise anyone who is affected by the long-term effects to hunt help.”
