What Is Long COVID? Understanding the Pandemic’s Mysterious Fallout – Yale Medicine

Just weeks after the first cases of COVID-19 hit U.S. shores, an op-ed appeared in The New York Times titled We Need to Talk About What Coronavirus Recoveries Look Like: They're a lot more complicated than most people realize. The author, Fiona Lowenstein, is a writer and yoga teacher living in New York City, who wrote about her own illness and the symptoms she was left with once she was released from the hospital. In the weeks since I was hospitalized for the coronavirus, the same question has flooded my email inbox, texts and direct messages: Are you better yet? I dont yet know how to answer.

She was better, she wrote on April 13, 2020, but she wasnt well. And others she was in touch with were having the same issue. Unlike most diseases, Long COVID was first described not by doctors, but by the patients themselves. Even the term Long COVID was coined by a patient. Dr. Elisa Perego, an honorary research fellow at University College in London, came up with the hashtag #LongCOVID when tweeting about her own experience with the post-COVID syndrome. The term went viral and suddenly social media, and then the media itself, was full of these stories.

Complaints like "I can't seem to concentrate anymore" or "I'm constantly fatigued throughout the day" became increasingly common, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. With nothing abnormal turning up from their many thorough lab tests, patients and their physicians were left feeling helpless and frustrated.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined Long COVID as the "continuation or development of new symptoms three months after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, with these symptoms lasting for at least two months with no other explanation." This deliberately broad definition reflects the complex nature of this syndrome. We now understand that these symptoms are wide-ranging, including heart palpitations, cough, nausea, fatigue, cognitive impairment (commonly referred to as "brain fog"), and more. Also, many who experience Long COVID following an acute infection face an elevated risk of such medical complications as blood clots and (type 2) diabetes.

As of March 2024, its estimated that about 17% of patients who get COVID-19 will go on to develop post-acute COVID-19 syndrome, the medical term for Long COVID. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest that Long COVID disproportionately affects women, and individuals between the ages of 40 and 49 have the highest reported rates of developing this post-acute infection syndrome.

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What Is Long COVID? Understanding the Pandemic's Mysterious Fallout - Yale Medicine