RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Months af­ter re­cov­er­ing from COVID-19, peo­ple are con­tin­u­ing to strug­gle at home with sleep­less­ness, anx­i­ety, de­pres­sion, fa­tigue, cough, joint and mus­cle pain as well as heart pal­pi­ta­tions.

The symp­toms are con­sis­tent with long COVID in which COVID sur­vivors suf­fer last­ing and de­bil­i­tat­ing symp­toms be­yond the first bout of in­fec­tion. 

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, Con­sul­tant Physi­cian and host of CNC3’s Ask the Doc­tor Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh said it was time to set up a hot­line for long COVID pa­tients.

Last year, 10 per cent of 45,000 COVID sur­vivors were suf­fer­ing from the com­pli­ca­tion.

But rather than suf­fer at home, Teelucks­ingh called on long COVID pa­tients to ac­cess the hos­pi­tals’ clin­ics.

“A healthy di­et, grad­ual ex­er­cise with self-pac­ing, deep breath­ing tech­niques, phys­io­ther­a­py, stop­ping smok­ing, lim­it­ed al­co­hol or caf­feine, rest and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty if so-in­clined, ex­pe­dite re­cov­ery,” he said.

He called on pa­tients to seek med­ical at­ten­tion im­me­di­ate­ly for wors­en­ing breath­less­ness (a home pulse oxime­ter mea­sures oxy­gen sat­u­ra­tion and lev­els above 96 per cent are re­as­sur­ing), chest pain, con­fu­sion or weak­ness on one side of the body. 

Not­ing that re­search in the Unit­ed States sug­gests that vac­ci­na­tion may im­prove symp­toms, Teelucks­ingh re­called a pa­tient who con­fessed to want­i­ng to com­mit sui­cide af­ter sur­viv­ing COVID.

“Many peo­ple re­quire ex­tend­ed sick leave and may suf­fer fam­i­ly be­reave­ments, job loss­es, fi­nan­cial stress and food pover­ty. Lo­cal re­search seems non-ex­is­tent and out­pa­tient clin­ics re­quire pa­tient-cen­tred mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary sup­port. The rel­e­vant min­istries, men­tal health and so­cial sup­port ser­vices have to as­sist these voice­less in­di­vid­u­als as we learn of the mys­te­ri­ous in­tri­ca­cies of long COVID,” Teelucks­ingh said.

Mean­while, COVID sur­vivor and for­mer med­ical di­rec­tor at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon, who has treat­ed over 500 COVID pa­tients at home said some of his pa­tients have al­so been suf­fer­ing from long COVID.

“It varies from per­son to per­son. Some have a lin­ger­ing cough. Some have a re­duc­tion in ex­er­cise tol­er­ance. Loss of taste and smell can al­so re­main with the pa­tients,” he said.

He added, “Re­as­sur­ance is what these pa­tients need, that in time the symp­toms will go away. I en­cour­age them to get back to ex­er­cise, do what they can do and be aware that it will take time to get back to their pre-COVID state.”

He said peo­ple must be pa­tient as they re­cu­per­ate.

“They have to live with it and be pa­tient. Cough mix­tures don’t help much. Don’t ex­pect vis­its to doc­tors to give much re­lief as there are no drugs that doc­tors can give them to im­prove ex­er­cise tol­er­ance. I say to them, be grate­ful to be alive and rest as­sured that with time, not drugs you will even­tu­al­ly re­turn to your pre-COVID state,” Cha­toor­goon added.

He said he has been left with a lin­ger­ing cough since he re­cov­ered from COVID.

“I take noth­ing for it. But I am cough­ing less as time goes by. I have not en­coun­tered mem­o­ry loss. Peo­ple do feel tired more eas­i­ly than be­fore but it does get bet­ter with time and that varies from per­son to per­son. Some men do get erec­tile dys­func­tion which al­so gets bet­ter with time,” he added.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment about long COVID, Health Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said, “This is a clin­i­cal ques­tion to be posed to the CMO (Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health).

How­ev­er, CMO Roshan Paras­ram could not be reached and did not re­turn calls.

A re­cent study, pub­lished Tues­day in the jour­nal Na­ture Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, found that peo­ple who go on to de­vel­op long COVID have low­er lev­els of cer­tain an­ti­bod­ies in their blood soon af­ter they are in­fect­ed with the coro­n­avirus.

If con­firmed through larg­er stud­ies, the find­ings could help sci­en­tists de­vel­op a test to pre­dict who may con­tin­ue to suf­fer from symp­toms weeks, months and even years fol­low­ing in­fec­tion.

In an ar­ti­cle writ­ten by Reuter’s Nan­cy Lapid it was said that the bac­te­ria liv­ing in the small in­tes­tine may con­tribute to the risk for long COVID af­ter in­fec­tion with SARS-CoV-2.

Re­searchers analysed the “gut mi­cro­bio­me” in 116 COVID-19 pa­tients in Hong Kong in 2020 and found that six months af­ter the most com­mon symp­toms were fa­tigue, poor mem­o­ry, hair loss, anx­i­ety and sleep dis­tur­bances. 

What is long COVID?

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) ex­plains: “Post COVID-19 con­di­tion oc­curs in in­di­vid­u­als with a his­to­ry of prob­a­ble or con­firmed SARS-CoV-2 in­fec­tion, usu­al­ly three months from the on­set of COVID-19 with symp­toms that last for at least two months that can­not be ex­plained by an al­ter­na­tive di­ag­no­sis.”

A study by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West of Scot­land iden­ti­fied more than 100 symp­toms as­so­ci­at­ed with post-COVID con­di­tions. The most com­mon symp­toms in­clude fa­tigue, per­sis­tent cough, short­ness of breath, brain fog, headache, heart pal­pi­ta­tions, joint or mus­cle pain, pins-and-nee­dles feel­ing, and anx­i­ety that usu­al­ly im­pact an in­di­vid­ual’s every­day func­tion­ing.