Long Covid: the post-viral syndrome

There are more and more cases of people suffering from what has been called “Post-viral syndrome” or “Long Covid”. This syndrome is still under study because collecting the data is a challenge in its own as the clues are not always easily traceable to Long Covid.

What is Long Covid

Long Covid manifests itself in a series of symptoms resulting from Covid-19 infection that can occur after weeks and persist for months. Following the studies done, it was concluded that Long Covid does not directly depend on the severity of the disease caused by the virus.

However, it was noted that in the majority of cases the affected subjects under the age of 60 are women while for the sample of older subjects, there is no distinction between males and females. Some sporadic cases in paediatric age have also been recorded but without evidence with regard to gender.

Symptoms and manifestations

The clinical manifestations are varied but can basically be divided into two categories:

• General manifestations such as: tiredness, fatigue, fever, muscle aches, anorexia, muscle weakness, mental fog, etc.
• Organ-specific manifestations such as: persistent cough, pulmonary complications, breathlessness, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, or psychological problems.

For the moment, there is no answer regarding the treatments or therapies necessary to face this problem but only advice to alleviate the ailments caused by Long Covid depending on the manifestations in each patient. The recommendations include movement and exercise, psychological support and attention to nutrition.