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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Long COVID clinic at Arima a one-stop shop for patients

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
1278 days ago
20220129
Arima General Hospital.

Arima General Hospital.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

The Min­istry of Health (MOH) has es­tab­lished a Long COVID-19 clin­ic at the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, a one-stop so­lu­tion shop cater­ing for pa­tients who have suf­fered mild and/or se­vere strains of the virus.

Speak­ing dur­ing the MOH’s vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing on Sat­ur­day, the hos­pi­tal’s Med­ical Di­rec­tor Dr Ravi Lala claimed that more than 500 pa­tients had been seen since its in­cep­tion last Oc­to­ber.

Long COVID is when a pa­tient feels the ef­fects of COVID-19 that con­tin­ue for weeks or months be­yond the ini­tial ill­ness.

Symp­toms in­clude fa­tigue, short­ness of breath, dif­fi­cul­ty sleep­ing, anx­i­ety and de­pres­sion, heart pal­pi­ta­tions, chest tight­ness or pain, joint or mus­cle pain, not be­ing able to think straight or fo­cus which is re­ferred to as brain fog, change in smell/taste, and a per­sis­tent cough.

Ap­pear­ing along­side epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dr Av­ery Hinds, Lala ex­plained the process re­quires pa­tients to have a spe­cialised re­fer­ral let­ter be­fore the pre-vis­it screen­ing can be set up via a phone call.

He said it was nec­es­sary so that med­ical of­fi­cials can bet­ter un­der­stand the pa­tient ahead of time.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) said post COVID-19 con­di­tions can oc­cur in in­di­vid­u­als with a his­to­ry of a prob­a­ble or con­firmed vi­ral in­fec­tion.

This usu­al­ly presents three months from the on­set of COVID-19, with symp­toms that last for at least two months and can­not be ex­plained by an al­ter­na­tive di­ag­no­sis.

Lala said en­try in­to the Ex­ec­u­tive Well­ness Clin­ic was done via sev­er­al meth­ods.

He out­lined, “With­in our own hos­pi­tal sys­tems, we self-re­fer pa­tients to our clin­ic. Sec­ond­ly, our forms for ad­mis­sion in­to the clin­ic have been wide­ly dis­trib­uted through­out our Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties. Oth­er mem­bers of staff with­in our sys­tem could re­fer via the form. Pa­tients could take the form, come to Ari­ma Gen­er­al and de­posit the form at the CSR's desk in our lob­by and the form then gets processed."

In­ter­est­ed peo­ple can email ex­ecwell­ness.agh@ncrha.co.tt for more in­for­ma­tion.

COVID-19


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