COVID hit the human race hard upon its arrival. It dumbs down as our immune system shapes it, changes it, and weakens it. It means that post-COVID patients continue to contend with the most aggressive strain. And they must drive their recovery process as the pandemic moves on, with all of the stresses that COVID-19 has brought.
The Challenges Faced by Post-COVID Patients
Many Americans are still in a dire situation. By now, it has become clear that COVID is not just a respiratory illness. As written by Pam Belluck, the COVID survivors showed symptoms that “could affect virtually any organ system or part of the body, from neurological to cardiovascular to gastrointestinal.” It means that most patients are confronting physical, neurological, cognitive, and emotional issues. And their struggle continues to overcome symptoms that may persist for weeks, months, years,, or even the rest of their lives.
Many Are Experiencing New Symptoms
A 2021 study by FAIR Health found that almost one-quarter of 1,959,982 Americans who caught COVID last year sought treatments for new medical problems. It was the largest population ever studied so far. That report aimedhe patients’ post-COVID conditions and identify the most common medical problems. The focus was on age, gender, mental health, and death.
Twenty-three point two percent (23.2%) of nearly two million patients studied had developed at least one post-COVID condition. While 50% of the hospitalized patients had one post-COVID condition, 27% of symptomatic but not hospitalized patients had mild or moderate symptoms, and 19% said they were asymptomatic.
Of the population studied, the largest group was aged between 19 and 29, representing 20.9% of all cases. Individuals aged 30-39 (18.9%) and 50-59 (18.3%) were also large. The findings, however, did not suggest that every COVID patient would develop long-term health effects.
What Are the Most Common Problems Identified?
The most common health problems identified in the report are aches, pain, brain fog, breathing issues, high cholesterol, malaise, fatigue, and high blood pressure. But the list goes on with patients leaving clinics with scarring, damage,, or inflammation that still needs to heal the lungs, heart, kidneys, sleep disorders, and mental health disorders like anxiety or depression.
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the author of one of the largest post-acute COVID-19 studies to date and head of the R&D service at the VA St. Louis Health Care System, told the Times “long COVID can affect nearly every organ system.” And as COVID moves through a lot more people in the coming days, it will continue to cause chronic symptoms and conditions.
Does COVID Act as a Trigger?
Most post-COVID patients are “at higher risk of developing” long-term complications. People are struggling with the long-term health issues they otherwise would have developed later in life – for example, lasting fatigue, pain, eye floaters, weakness of the legs, tics, spasms, or migraines. Most such symptoms occur because COVID can act as a trigger, quickening people’s future chronic conditions.
And yet,, post-COVID patients don’t even realize new maladies are already waiting for them. Many consider their health problems are the lasting effects of COVID itself. They also feel lost and powerless and think, “I don’t have COVID anymore, so there is nothing I need to worry about.”
Bottom Line:
Staying safe is a priority but urging people to maintain an active lifestyle as a preventive measure is the need of the hour. One of the worrisome aspects of COVID is that some post-COVID medical problems can linger for months or years. As we try to broaden our understanding of the long-term impact of COVID-19, there is a dire need to recommend some of the most effective recovery practices for post-COVID patients.
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