What are the risks of Long Covid?

Statement

Long Covid is an umbrella term covering a variety of different syndromes, often conflated and causing confusion among the public and the medical profession alike.

Dr Anthony Hinton suggests there is a group of patients who suffer badly from Covid 19 and end up in intensive care. These patients can have long term damage to their lungs and other organs due to the virus or from treatment received in the intensive care unit. Hinton cites another group of patients, with specific on-going problems, such as tinnitus or anosmia. A positive test for Covid will usually result in these patients being classified as long Covid sufferers, although the cause of the symptoms is not always clear and may have been present before.

More generally, whether there has been a positive or negative test, people can suffer from Covid or not and then have some or many of over 200 symptoms which can come and go for many months. It is difficult to arrive at a proper understanding of the situation when there is little analysis at present.

Key Points & Evidence

Discussing long Covid in children (Inside Health, Radio 4, 3 August 2021, from 8 minutes) Professor Sir Terence John Stephenson, leading the CLoCk study, outlines the difficulty of the research, 'It's a challenge, partly because it's new. It's also a challenge because... there is no accepted definition of Long Covid in children... and there is no simple test... blood test or any test, that says these people have Long Covid and these people don't... we have got almost 7000 young people aged 11-17 to complete an online questionnaire, telling us what kind of symptoms they have had... half of those young people tested positive... half didn’t... a lot of them had persisting symptoms three months after their test. But if you'd had a positive test, you were about twice as likely to have three or more symptoms three months after your test... a large proportion of these described themselves as being worried, sad or unhappy... probably due to a pandemic, lockdown, interference with friendship groups... the additional burden... we have found four dominant symptoms: tiredness, shortness of breath, headache and... persistent loss of smell.'

Read more...bbc.co.uk

The React Long Covid (React LC) project looking non-hospitalised children and young people with long COVID (The CLoCk Study) lead by Professor Sir Terence Stephenson, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health has received £1.4 million to over 3 years to help better understand the causes, symptoms and treatment of the condition. Those who have suffered post-viral fatigue syndromes in the past, prior, unrelated to Covid, can be relieved that this is at last being taken seriously.

Read more...gov.uk

Question Everything, 17 July 2021, Dr Anthony Hinton, 8:19:11, a recent Freedom of Information request revealed no increase in referrals for chronic fatigue syndrome in children compared to previous years.

Read more...questioneverything.io

Even as the Covid pandemic appears to be slowly subsiding, many individuals are now chronically ill with Long Covid and/or with the side effects of a Covid vaccination. It would appear that both clinical situations are primarily characterized by persistent presence of the spike protein and its negative impact on different tissues and organs.

Read more...orthomolecular.org

Conclusion

With the use of scans, doctors are discovering that the Coronavirus spike protein affects the heart (17%), lungs and brain tissues in particular.

With regard to children in particular, the effect of lockdowns, social isolation, removal from recreational and physical routines, exposure to anxiety and reliance on screen usage for extended periods of time, has led to behavioural changes and negative impacts on mental and overall health.

At present there is inconsistency and confusion in separating out the cause of symptoms and advice to help sufferers.

Posted: 29th September 2021

Tagged: long covid

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