Brain fog, fatigue, breathlessness

https://youtu.be/WMiXs0R_gEI

Professional diver Emiliano Pescarolo contracted coronavirus in March and spent 17 days in hospital in the Italian port city of Genoa before being discharged on April 10. Now, three months later, the 42-year-old still experiences breathing difficulties. “Once back home, even after weeks I couldn’t see any progress: if I took a small walk, it was like climbing Mount Everest. I was out of breath also just for talking. I was very worried,” he said. For much of Europe, the peak of Covid-19 infections has passed. But while hospitals are no longer awash with acute cases, there are thousands of people who had either confirmed or suspected Covid and, weeks or months later, say they are far from fully recovered. In the United Kingdom, communities of “long Covid” sufferers have spring up online, as people try to manage what appear to be long-term effects of a virus about which much remains unknown. Meanwhile, health authorities in the UK and Italy, two of the European nations worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, are starting to offer rehabilitation services to Covid-19 survivors. These will likely need to be wide-ranging, since research now indicates that coronavirus is a multi-system disease that can damage not only the lungs, but the kidneys, liver, heart, brain and nervous system, skin and gastrointestinal tract. Dr Piero Clavario, director of the post-Covid rehab institute attended by Pescarolo in Genoa, said his team had started contacting several hundred Covid-survivors treated by hospitals in the district in May. Of those, they have now visited more than 50. “They are not only those that were in ICU and intubated because of Covid, but also patients that spent not more than three days in the hospitals and then went home,” he said. “We investigate aspects that escape standard virological and pulmonary exams.” Of the 55 people visited by his team, eight needed no follow-up support and had no complications, Clavario said. “Fifty percent have psychological problems, 15% PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).” Each patient is given two half-day evaluations involving multiple tests by a team of doctors, cardiologists, neurologists, psychologists and physicians, Clavario said.

“What surprises me the most is that even the patients that have not spent any time in the ICU are extremely feeble: there is no evidence of a cardiological or pulmonary problem, but they are not even able to walk up a flight of stairs,” he said. “Most show a serious muscle weakness. A 52-year-old nurse had to go back to work after having recovered from Covid, but she just couldn’t physically make it. While some people were treated in hospital, others struggled through their illness at home. Many are not formally confirmed as having had Covid-19 despite their symptoms. In some cases, they were unable to get a test because of a lack of capacity in the early weeks of the virus’ rampage through the UK, even for frontline health care workers. Others had a test but it came back negative. Earlier this month, Hancock announced a major study into the long-term health effects of Covid-19 on patients who were hospitalized. The study, known as PHOSP-COVID, aims to track 10,000 people over the next 12 months or longer. The UK’s National Health Service also plans to set up an online platform to support Covid sufferers in their recovery and, in late May, opened a new rehabilitation center in southern England, the NHS Seacole Centre in Surrey, to help those most seriously affected. Other hospitals are also starting to offer rehabilitation services. In some people, their may be severe enough that they need long-term management in hospital, he said. But even in less severe cases, “it’s going to impact their ability to work, certainly to work in the way that they did before, it will affect their relationships, it will affect people who care for them, where their roles are going to have to change, where there was previously someone who was fit and well and now has a chronic condition.”