One year after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the cases of people suffering from the long Covid, or post viral syndrome, are on the rise, who after months of being infected still have debilitating and prolonged sequelae of the disease.
It is a phenomenon that is just beginning to be studied by the medical community, which in 2020 was focused on seeking treatments that would reduce the lethality of the disease and on developing a vaccine, while the health systems of all countries were overflowing with the constant outbreaks of evil, reported Hub, Johns Hopkins University internal publication.
The sequelae of prolonged Covid are: fatigue, shortness of breath, cough, pain in the joints, pain in the chest, muscles or headache, arrhythmias or accelerated pulse, loss of taste and smell, memory, concentration or sleeping problems, skin rashes and hair loss.
“We are all working to find out why some were infected and others were not, why in some the disease was more serious and how to have less mortality,” said Shruti Mehta, deputy chairman of the department of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
He indicated that it was expected that there would be sequelae among patients who presented more severe forms of Covid, which required intensive care and assisted breathing, but those who suffered long-term effects are those who had mild cases.
Shruti noted that daily exercisers are now barely able to walk or climb stairs due to joint pain and extreme fatigue. Many have chronic cognitive problems and confusion, short-term memory loss, and loss of taste and smell.
In nearly half of the cases, patients had to reduce their working hours according to Johns Hopkins surveys.
Professor of Epidemiology Priya Duggal of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health stated: “The more the number of patients grows, the more we have to recognize, as epidemiologists, that no number serves as a guide to understand what is happening or guide us towards solutions ”.
Last February Johns Hopkins launched a study to understand the long-term consequences of Covid-19, with a universe of 25 thousand cases. In the first month, 6,500 people were recruited for the study, which plans to follow its participants for months or years to come.
Until today, research on the so-called long Covid estimate that between 10 and 30 percent of all infected have reported persistent symptoms after infection and illness. The fact that there are more than 28 million cases in the United States means that millions of people can suffer from the consequences of Covid-19, which would further burden the public health system.
A study by the National Institute for Health Research in Great Britain, cited by the journal The Independent, found that in that country, seven out of 10 patients who were currently hospitalized have prolonged Covid symptoms, and that the most affected are white women between 40 and 60 years of age.
Optimism in the face of “selfish” viruses
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Glasgow hypothesize that common cold or flu viruses can expel the coronavirus from body cells and prevent them from infecting it.
Some viruses are known to compete to be the sole “occupant” of an organism and infect its cells; and there is the possibility that rhinovirus, which causes the common cold, or influenza viruses, which are considered “selfish pathogens” because they infect only organisms that are no longer hosts of other viruses, could “beat” the coronavirus reported BBC.
What makes progress in these studies difficult is that social distancing has reduced the spread of influenza and colds.
The team at the Virus Research Center in Glasgow used a replica of the lining of our airways, made from the same type of cells, and infected it with coronavirus and rhinovirus, which is one of the most widespread infections in people and a cause of the cold. common.
When the rhinovirus and the coronavirus were released at the same time, only the rhinovirus was successful in infection.
“The Covid never takes off, it is strongly inhibited by the rhinovirus,” explained Dr. Pablo Murcia to the BBC.
“This is absolutely exciting because if you have a high prevalence of rhinovirus, this could stop new infections from the pandemic,” he added.
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