Patients struggling with symptoms of ‘long-COVID’ months after contracting coronavirus are warning that the HSE has "no coherent strategy" for diagnosing their symptoms and offering support.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that COVID-19 can result in “prolonged illness and persistent symptoms” in people of all ages.

It notes that people who were never seriously ill or hospitalised can suffer long-term symptoms and urges Governments to provide “effective public health messaging” regarding the risks.

On Lunchtime Live this morning, 45-year-old mother-of-three Linda said she has been “basically battling the healthy service and doctors” for answers ever since she tested positive for the virus in October.

“I’m young; I’m only 45,” she said. “I cycled up to 20k three times a week pre-October. I don’t smoke. I don’t really drink that much and I was very fit.

“I am just very frightened because what is annoying me the most is that the US and New Zealand and Australia and England seem to have recognised that long-COVID is a syndrome and people need help. It’s not a two-week thing.”

Long-COVID

She said she has not been officially diagnosed with long-COVID and her doctor is “baffled every time I turn up that I’m not better.”

“The majority of my symptoms are chronic fatigue,” she said. “I have had pain in my right ribcage and my right arms since day one of being diagnosed with COVID and that has not gone away. It is very scary.

“My doctor has given me pain killers; he’s given me something for muscle-related injuries; he’s given me something for nerves. He now thinks its neurological; he has given me the very strongest pain killers and they didn’t work.

“Then coming up to Christmas, I lost my ability to speak properly and that really, really frightened me.”

Symptoms

Also, on the show, caller Tanya said her health started deteriorating around two months after she had symptoms of the virus in the early days of the pandemic.

“At the end of May or June, I started to have really severe headaches and then I started to have shortness of breath,” she said. “Then I started to have a little bit of high blood pressure and I thought, ‘oh my god, I am so unfit, sitting at home not working, not exercising, my health his being really affected by this lockdown’ and put it down to that

“Then I thought, am I pre-menopausal, maybe that is starting to happen and this is what it feels like.

“It just started to get worse and worse and a whole bunch of other symptoms started piling on. I started losing my hair. It started falling out in bunches like post-chemo sort of falling out.

“I started having unexplained rashes all over my body, having depth issues, I couldn’t sleep and it just goes on – you could take up a whole programme with the symptoms.”

"No coherent strategy"

She noted that the UK has published diagnostic and basic treatment guidelines for long-COVID with multi-disciplinary clinics available to patients.

She said Irish doctors appear to be working in a vacuum with “no coherent strategy” to help doctors diagnose and treat long-COVID.

She warned that long-COVID is not limited only to people who suffer severe symptoms while battling the virus.

“I was never in ICU; I wasn’t even sick enough to need a paracetamol in March,” she said.

“That is the scary thing. Up to 50% of people have asymptomatic COVID. So, there are lots of people walking around who have no symptoms whatsoever; who have had COVID and could possibly go on to develop long-COVID and they won’t know where it came from.”

World Health Organisation

In September, the WHO carried out a survey which found that 35% of COVID-19 patients had not returned to their usual state of health two-three weeks after testing positive.

Some 20% of people aged 18 to 34-years-old reported led that some symptoms were prolonged.

The organisation noted that a 2003 study of involving survivors of the SARS coronavirus found that “persistent and significant impairment of exercise capacity and health status” could last as long as two years.

Other studies have found high levels of chronic fatigue among SARS survivors as long as three-and-a-half years after recovery.

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