The Friday hello from Covid-19 It has been the most contagious of all. The high level of transmission Omicron It has raised the number of infections to record highs. Much has been said during the last three months about the positive figures that this variant has left and continues to leave in its wake. With these data on the table, experts warn of an increase in cases of Long Covid or Persistent Covid.
During these last two years they have been the great forgotten of the system and there are still those who do not know the existence of Long Covid. Patients suffering from persistent Covid are unable to recover from the sequelae caused by this virus after what is considered to be the acute phase of this disease. It is estimated that between 10% and 20% of people who become infected with coronavirus develop it. In many of the cases, they even take the virus asymptomatically and it is after one or two months when the disorder begins to show its face.
Experts warn that the number of persistent Covid cases increases exponentially with each wave. For this reason, given the progress that Ómicron has experienced since its appearance, the number of people affected would be beginning to rise proportionally. “Not enough time has passed yet, but an increase is being seen due to the large number of people affected by Ómicron,” says Lorenzo Armenteros, spokesman for the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG).
For its part, from the Long Covid Andalusia Association they already accuse this increase in cases in recent weeks: «It was one of the uncertainties we had, because Ómicron we knew that it was very contagious but we did not know to what extent it could affect persistent Covid and, At the moment, cases are arriving. We are noticing that there are more people who are writing to us and they come from Christmas,” explains Nuria Hernández, spokesperson for the association.
The established criterion to start considering the presence of Long Covid is three months. If after this period the symptoms persist, the patient could be experiencing this type of syndrome. That is why this association points directly to Ómicron as the cause of the cases that are occurring today, since it is the variant that has predominated since December.
“So far no differences have been observed in terms of symptoms from one variant to another. Regardless of how the acute phase has developed, the symptoms that appear later are similar”, says Lorenzo Armenteros.
The symptomatology of persistent Covid includes more than 70 different conditions, which makes treatment difficult. Among the most common are fatigue or tiredness, but there are many other symptoms at cardiac, respiratory, neurological, ophthalmological or hematological levels. “We cannot limit it only to the respiratory one, each patient shows other different symptoms,” says Nuria Hernández. Headaches, dizziness, syncope, tachycardia, fatigue… “Sometimes they are symptoms that take time to associate with Covid, especially those people who have undergone it asymptomatically,” adds the spokesperson for this association.
Today, patients suffering from Long Covid continue without specific treatment: «We can only do symptomatic treatments and, in most cases, multidisciplinary. We have hope in antivirals, since the ultimate goal is to seek a total cure, not palliate the disease, “says Armenteros.
In Andalusia, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people suffer from persistent Covid. In less than a year, the number of people who have attended the Asociación Long Covid Andalucía has doubled to more than 600 Andalusians. Nuria Hernández recalls that, given the incessant increase in cases that has been occurring in the community in recent months, “we saw fit to register as an association.”
Reinfection
Ómicron has not only brought with it an increase in persistent Covid cases, many patients who were already taking it have been reinfected with this new variant. This is the case of Cristina Carrasquilla, a Malaga woman who was infected in August 2020 and has been dealing, since then, with sequelae that incapacitate her. In February of this year she contracted the virus again: «I realized it because she had been three or four days with a lower saturation than normal. They did a PCR and I tested positive again. I am still recovering to this day.”
“When the patient already has persistent symptoms, he manifests the disease in a more altered way than any other person. It is a symptomatic regrowth, an exaggeration of what they already felt before »explains the SEMG spokesman.
For now, the Long Covid Andalusia association continues in the fight to encourage research into this disease. “It is true that an action protocol was created but not all doctors know about it,” explains Nuria Hernández, who denounces, in addition, that the inclusion criteria exclude those patients who do not provide a positive PCR test or have an acute infection.
In addition, from the entity they accuse the problems at the labor level that these people are facing: «We are encountering many difficulties because many forced discharges are taking place. They are incorporating patients who are not recovered into work. The spokeswoman for this association defends that it is important to review and establish some extensions because “if we are not healthy it is difficult to return to working life.”
Dissemination and disclosure is the final requirement of this entity: “It can happen to anyone. We seek to generate empathy, it is a very invisible disease.
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