Many long COVID patients adjust to slim recovery odds as world moves on

14/11/2024 14:22

        There are certain phrases that Wachuka Gichohi finds difficult to hear after enduring four years of living with long COVID, marked by debilitating fatigue, pain, panic attacks and other symptoms so severe she feared she would die overnight.
        
        Among them are normally innocuous statements such as, "Feel better soon" or "Wishing you a quick recovery," the Kenyan businesswoman said, shaking her head.
        
        Gichohi, 41, knows such phrases are well-intentioned. "I think you have to accept, for me, it’s not going to happen."
        
        Recent scientific studies shed new light on the experience of millions of patients like Gichohi. They suggest the longer someone is sick, the lower their chances of making a full recovery.
        
        The best window for recovery is in the first six months after getting COVID-19, with better odds for people whose initial illness was less severe, as well as those who are vaccinated, researchers in the United Kingdom and the United States found. People whose symptoms last between six months and two years are less likely to fully recover.
        
        For patients who have been struggling for more than two years, the chance of a full recovery "is going to be very slim," said Manoj Sivan, a professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Leeds and one of the authors of the findings published in The Lancet.
        
        Sivan said this should be termed "persistent long COVID" and understood like the chronic conditions myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or fibromyalgia, which can be features of long COVID or risk factors for it.