Covid-19 News and Discussions
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One in five people diagnosed with COVID-19 fail to recover months after infection, new study finds
The report, based out of the United States, mirrors recent reporting by Australian researchers.
www.abc.net.au
Months after being diagnosed with COVID-19, one in five people are still suffering from symptoms, new research finds
By Brianna Morris-GrantPosted 7h ago 7 hours ago
The rehabilitation unit at St Vincent's Public Hospital houses its Long COVID Clinic.(ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
abc.net.au/news/long-covid-research-study/103986302
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- In short: A study of thousands of Americans has found one in five are still suffering from symptoms 90 days after being infected with COVID-19.
- The new study mirrors research in Australia, which found many with long COVID struggled to return to work after infection.
- What's next? More research is still needed into the long-term effects of the virus.
Kids with long COVID want you to know they're not lying
They're losing their formative years to this debilitating disease. But for too many children with long COVID, finding help is a frustrating and traumatic process that leaves them feeling isolated and invisible.Read more
An investigation by more than two dozen researchers found while the average time of recovery was 20 days, an estimated 22.5 per cent failed to recover 90 days after infection.
The report, based out of the United States and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, mirrored recent reporting by Australian researchers.
The peer-reviewed study used data from the Collaborative Cohort of Cohorts for COVID-19 Research (C4R), a long-term collaboration of 14 different studies across the US.
Some of the studies have been following its own participants for up to 50 years, meaning they can now compare their health pre- and post-COVID-19 diagnosis.
A total of 4,708 participants were asked whether they were "completely recovered from COVID-19".
Once they confirmed their recovery, they were asked how long it had taken.
"[We] found that one in five adults infected with SARS-CoV-2 did not fully recover by three months post-infection in a racially and ethnically diverse US population-based sample," the report said.
"Recovery by 90 days was less likely in women and participants with pre-pandemic clinical cardiovascular disease.
"Vaccination prior to infection and infection during the Omicron variant wave were associated with greater recovery … results were similar for reinfections."
The research team noted the results may have been limited by the self-reported recovery time and the "potential for measurement error, uncontrolled confounding and selection bias".
YOUTUBEData from Australia's longest-running post-COVID clinic in 2022 revealed a high proportion of patients were women in their 40s and 50s.
Dr Mulu Abraha Woldegiorgis, a researcher at the Australian National University (ANU), told the ABC it was "interesting" to see the findings classified by "before and after Omicron".
"The prevalence [of long COVID] during Omicron was the same as ours," she said.
"They use slightly different definitions and methodology, but even with that the prevalence was high. It shows us that long COVID is still a public health concern globally."
Long COVID 'not just cough, or tiredness'
Four years after the beginning of the pandemic, much about "long COVID" remains a mystery for health officials.What is long COVID?
According to the World Health Organization, long COVID "occurs in individuals with a history of probable or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, usually 3 months from the onset of COVID-19 with symptoms that last for at least 2 months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis."Earlier this year Queensland's chief health officer called for the term "long COVID" to be scrapped despite stating the symptoms were "real".
"Using this term long COVID implies this virus has some unique, exceptional and sinister property that differentiates it form other viruses," Dr John Gerrard said.
"I want to make it clear that the symptoms that some patients describe after having COVID-19 are real. We believe they are real."
A study of more than 11,000 Australians who had tested positive for COVID-19 has had similar results — almost one in five were still experiencing symptoms three months after a 2022 diagnosis.
The joint ANU and Western Australia Department of Health study, released in March, found 90 per cent of participants with long COVID were suffering multiple symptoms.
Tiredness, fatigue, "brain fog", sleep problems, coughing, and changes in their menstrual cycle were frequently reported.
"Among respondents with long COVID who had worked or studied prior to their infection, 15.2 per cent had reduced their number of hours, and 2.7 per cent had not returned to work at all," the report said.
The researchers also noted long COVID was more prevalent in its sample than the levels reported by other studies in the United Kingdom and Canada.
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Australian researchers have seen positive results in treating long COVID with naltrexone.
Dr Woldegiorgis was the lead researcher on the ANU report. She said Australia presented a "unique" cohort of highly vaccinated people.
"You have multiple symptoms, it's not just cough, or tiredness, they have multiple symptoms and that affects them," she said.
"A longer term assessment is important. What we saw was by 90 days, so a long term follow-up may provide additional information on how people are going in a year or two.
"What's the recovery period? Are they recovering soon or is the term longer?"
The report also found those who had been vaccinated were less at risk of developing long COVID.
"I want to stress the importance of vaccination," Dr Woldegiorgis said.
"In Australia the vast majority were vaccinated ... at least one dose prevents long COVID compared to no vaccination."
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Is a COVID summer surge coming? Here’s what CDC data shows
by: Alix MartichouxPosted: Jun 17, 2024 / 12:32 PM PDT
Updated: Jun 17, 2024 / 12:32 PM PDT
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(NEXSTAR) – Warning signs that could signal a rise in COVID infections are appearing in parts of the U.S.
Wastewater testing, which can help detect the spread of a COVID in a community, has shown a significant uptick of the virus in several states. Testing sites in Montana and Florida are reporting “very high” levels of COVID, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Levels are “high” in wastewater across Alaska, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland and New Mexico.
Emergency room visits related to COVID-19 are also on the rise, the CDC says, spiking 12.6% in one week. The biggest jumps were seen last week in Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.
There’s a new dominant COVID variant — but are the symptoms any different?
Even with the recent increases, however, hospitalizations for COVID-19 remain very low nationwide. Only 0.6% of all emergency department visits were diagnosed as COVID cases last week.
The CDC also reports a 1% increase in positive tests, but with the proliferation of at-home COVID testing, positive cases often go unreported.
The uptick in cases may be driven by the new dominant subvariants, like FLiRT and KP.3. While COVID vaccines are still very effective against these strains, it may be a while since you’ve gotten a booster, leaving you more susceptible.
A lingering effect of the pandemic is making traffic worse in these US cities
“If everybody’s getting vaccinated in November and December and then everyone is getting sick in December and January, the population is all becoming susceptible around the same time in the summer,” Ilan Rubin, a research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told TIME.
The travel and socializing that comes with summer may also increase your exposure.
Yommie
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COVID-19 on the rise in Alberta as summer approaches
Cases, hospitalizations and positivity rates have been trending up since April
Jennifer Lee · CBC News · Posted: Jun 18, 2024 7:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 hours ago
A positive COVID-19 rapid test result is shown in this file photo. The current positivity rate in Alberta is 11.9 per cent. (CBC/Radio-Canada)
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COVID cases, hospitalizations and positivity rates have been rising since April.
"Unlike other respiratory illnesses, we're not really getting a summer reprieve," said Sarah (Sally) Otto, a COVID-19 modeller and professor in the department of zoology at the University of British Columbia.
"We're seeing this across Canada and globally, that there's an uptick in cases. And that's coming from these new variants [and the] evolution of this virus."
The KP.2 and KP.3 variants, combined, now account for more than half of Alberta's sequenced cases.
"They have changes, again, that help them evade our immune systems and get in, again, just a little bit easier."
While Otto expects a further uptick, she's not predicting a dramatic wave over the summer.
"We don't expect a huge rise, just maybe another doubling of cases, which is terrible, we don't want any more cases … but I don't expect emergency levels."
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Hospitalizations have been climbing since April, when they dropped below 100.
The positivity rate has also been increasing and it is now sitting at 11.9 per cent.
"I think that there has been a true increase in transmission [and] there has been a true increase in more severe disease," said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Alberta.
"It has been rumbling up over that period. It has been a fairly slow increase."
According to Saxinger, a lot of the people being hospitalized due to COVID-19 are seniors and those who are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated.
Dr. Lynora Saxinger is a University of Alberta infectious diseases specialist. She says there has been a slow increase in transmission of the disease. (Peter Evans/CBC)
"I think in some people, and across the community in general, immunity is wearing thinner," she said.
"People that are immuno-compromised or still have multiple risks — especially age as a risk or time-since-last vaccination as a risk — could still look at getting the currently available vaccine, which would provide additional protection for a period of time."
With an updated vaccine likely coming this fall, she said it's important for people to make the decision soon so they're eligible for what she expects will be a November rollout.
"People over 65 should look at their vaccine history and I would get one right away."
She's also urging people to test if they have symptoms, rather than assume it's just a summer cold.
According to provincial data, 16.8 per cent of Albertans have received a COVID-19 vaccine since last August.
"People are more willing to get the flu vaccine even though the COVID risks to them of being hospitalized or dying are so much higher," said Otto.
Another 13 deaths were reported last week, for a total of 605 since the end of August 2023.
"There continue to be a lot of deaths from COVID," said Otto.
"This isn't a disease that's so mild you can ignore it. It really is harming our community."
Yommie
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Long Covid feels like a gun to my head
Being held at gunpoint by a Guatemalan street gang was scary, but I didn't fear for my life. With long Covid, at its worst, I wrote letters to my children in fear that I wouldn't survive the night.
www.statnews.com
Long Covid feels like a gun to my head
By Rachel Hall-Clifford June 18, 2024Reprints
Ihave spent my career studying infectious diseases that fall under the heading of neglected tropical diseases. Now I have a neglected disease — long Covid — an incurable (for now and for me) disease.
As a medical anthropologist working in global health, I thought I understood the despair of poor health. I didn’t. I join 7% of the U.S. adult population — or about 18 million Americans — who have experienced long Covid. Diagnosis of long Covid remains uncertain and contested, and treatments, ranging from repurposed drugs to hyperbaric oxygen, are even more so.
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I was infected with SARS-CoV2 during the Omicron wave of January 2022. It crashed through my kid’s kindergarten class and swept our household along with it. We had none of the “underlying conditions” that may indicate increased risks of poor outcomes from Covid (and which have been used throughout the pandemic to allay fears that dangerous outcomes would only happen to “others”). My acute infection wasn’t scary: I had fever, aches, and chills for about four days. My initial Covid aches and pains were nothing in comparison to when I had dengue fever, known as “bone break fever,” while working in Guatemala’s remote mountains.
And then I just never got better. It took a couple of months for me to realize that. I developed crushing chest pain and a heart rate that would rival a hummingbird’s. I couldn’t walk around my block without stopping to catch my breath. I was often dizzy, and my arms and legs felt like leaden sausages that had grown too big for their casings.
Related: ‘Concern is real’ about long Covid’s impact on Americans and disability claims, report says
Like many of my global health colleagues, I love a good adventure and don’t mind flirting with danger a little. I’ll go anywhere and talk to anyone. I once talked a Guatemalan street gang out of harming my small research team as they held a Kalashnikov to our heads during a robbery. It was scary, but I didn’t fear for my life. I knew it wasn’t the end of my story. But I have thought that long Covid might be: At its worst, I wrote letters to my children in fear that I wouldn’t survive the night.ADVERTISEMENT
More than two years in, I’m among the luckiest of those living with long Covid. My symptoms are managed, though imperfectly. I have the academic background to follow the latest research findings and access to brilliant colleagues doing some of that work. I have the money, insurance, and health care providers that have enabled me to try several treatments.
Here’s a bit of what I’ve tried so far, all shots in the dark: A beta blocker controls my chest pain and high heart rate. A 3-month course of powerful blood thinners improved numbness and pain in my limbs. Constant use of electrolyte fluids like Gatorade and Pedialyte (ironically what I studied in graduate school) improves my dizziness and is essential for propping myself up to teach a class in a lecture hall or get through a day of Zoom meetings. My iliac vein has completely collapsed in my left leg, and my cardiologist wants me to get a stent.
I wouldn’t be able to hold down the jobs in warehouses, factories, and farms that many in my family have had.
Though my world has gotten small, and I’m not able to travel for my work as I once did, most days I feel like I just got off a long-haul flight and live in a permanent state of jet lag. I have one of those pill organizers stuffed full of medications and supplements that I hope will help at least a little. (I still struggle to reconcile my self-identity with this new reality.)
Related: NIH documents show how $1.6 billion long Covid initiative has failed so far to meet its goals
I was able to take a 15-day course of the antiviral Paxlovid, and it was the best I’ve felt in two years. For many people, the side effects of this medicine are terrible, but I never wanted its hallmark metallic tang to end. About two days after my course of Paxlovid ended, though, my symptoms crept back. Recent findings of viral persistence came as no surprise to me, and new results from a clinical trial investigating a 15-day course of Paxlovid in long Covid patients has shown no benefit.I am now taking (at great cost) maraviroc, an antiviral used to treat HIV, which helps partially control my symptoms. I recently slid into the whirring tomb of an MRI machine to try to find an explanation for persistent post-Covid migraines in my brain, but that was a dead end. Nothing was found, and I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
I admit I am scared. This is not a funny story I will tell colleagues over drinks later. There’s no gangland drug lord to negotiate with this time. Instead, I spend a lot of my time lying in the dark (I’m here now, even as I type this) negotiating with god and science to make me — and all of us suffering with long Covid and other post-viral illnesses — better. It’s surprisingly been the short periods when I have felt better that are the most upsetting, as they highlight how terrible I feel most of the time.
So I fake it. I need the pretense of being my old, fearless self. I need to discuss interesting things with colleagues and teach and run my lab. I need to take the snacks to soccer and help my kids with homework. That’s what makes me who I am, even as I playact a poor facsimile of my healthy self that requires hours (sometimes days) of recovery time afterwards.
I will continue to bargain with the universe to get to live the life I have worked to build for myself. I want that for everyone. My work in global health has shown me both the fragility of life but also the value of fighting for everyone’s right to a full and healthy life.
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I understand that no one cares much about Covid anymore. It’s been a long haul for all of us, even those who aren’t “long haulers.” I hope everyone who hasn’t experienced long Covid never really understand what I’m talking about — what others with chronic illness and disability have tried to teach us — that our abled bodies are only temporary. Long Covid and the SARS-CoV-2 infections that cause it are harsh teachers.
I am inspired by the work of the long Covid Patient-Led Research Collaborative and the research being done to uncover the causes of and cures for long Covid. But it’s not enough. Given the widespread burden of disease and the losses to the economy and social fabric it is causing in the U.S. and around the globe, the U.S. government must act quickly and decisively to curb long Covid. The Long Covid Moonshot is a collective advocating for $1 billion in annual research funding for long Covid, akin to the Operation Warp Speed that enabled the first generation of Covid-19 vaccines. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) recently released a Long Covid Moonshot legislative proposal. Bipartisan support for long Covid is essential so that someday no one needs to care about Covid and its lasting effects.
Long Covid feels like living with a gun to my head. Please pull the trigger on the moonshot.
Yommie
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The covid-19 pandemic is hanging over Britain’s election
The latest edition of our Blighty newsletter
Yommie
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Covid immune response study could explain why some escape infection
Subjects who kept virus at bay showed rapid response in nasal immune cells and more activity in early-alert gene
www.theguardian.com
Covid immune response study could explain why some escape infection
Subjects who kept virus at bay showed rapid response in nasal immune cells and more activity in early-alert geneHannah Devlin Science correspondent
Wed 19 Jun 2024 17.45 BST
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Scientists have discovered differences in the immune response that could explain why some people seem to reliably escape Covid infection.
The study, in which healthy adults were intentionally given a small nasal dose of Covid virus, suggested that specialised immune cells in the nose could see off the virus at the earliest stage before full infection takes hold. Those who did not succumb to infection also had high levels of activity in a gene that is thought to help flag the presence of viruses to the immune system.
“These findings shed new light on the crucial early events that either allow the virus to take hold or rapidly clear it before symptoms develop,” said Dr Marko Nikolić, senior author of the study at University College London and honorary consultant in respiratory medicine. “We now have a much greater understanding of the full range of immune responses, which could provide a basis for developing potential treatments and vaccines that mimic these natural protective responses.”
As part of the UK Covid-19 Human Challenge study, 36 healthy adult volunteers without previous history of having Covid and who were unvaccinated were administered a low dose of the virus through the nose. The study was carried out in 2021 at the height of the pandemic.
In 16 volunteers, the researchers monitored activity in immune cells in the blood and the lining of the nose to provide the most detailed timeline of immune activity before, during and after infection. These participants were found to fall into three distinct groups: six people developed a sustained infection and became ill; three people became transiently positive but without developing a full infection; and seven experienced an “abortive infection”. This subset never tested positive, but the tests showed they had mounted an immune response.
In the abortive and transient groups, samples taken from before exposure to Covid showed these volunteers had high background levels of activity in a gene called HLA-DQA2. This was seen in “antigen-presenting” cells, which flag danger to the immune system. “These cells will take a little bit of the virus and show it to immune cells and say: ‘This is foreign: you need to go and sort it out,’” said Dr Kaylee Worlock of UCL, first author of the study.
The findings, published in Nature, suggest that people who have high levels of activity in this gene may have a more efficient immune response to Covid, meaning the infection never gets beyond the body’s first line of defence. However, they were not completely immune – the volunteers were followed after the study and some later caught Covid in the community.
In the people who briefly tested positive, the scientists also recorded a rapid immune response in nasal cells, within a day of exposure, and a slower immune response in blood cells. By contrast, those who developed a full infection had a much slower nasal response, starting on average five days after exposure, allowing the virus to establish itself.
The team said the findings could provide a basis for developing more effective treatments and vaccines that mimic optimal protective responses.
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