WHO Declared COVID Pandemic Five Years Ago Today

NBC News reports:

Since the World Health Organization characterized Covid as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, scientists don’t fully understand why some people develop disabling chronic conditions after the initial viral infection. The U.S. may be coming through the first post-pandemic winter without a major surge in cases, but each infection carries a risk of developing long Covid. Some scientists are calling for new types of clinical trials to be designed for the most debilitated long Covid sufferers.

Long Covid is known to cause over 200 different symptoms in nearly a dozen organ systems, including those of the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, eyes and skin, but there’s no approved test for it or recommended treatment. Research shows long Covid is more common in middle-aged people, particularly women and those with weakened immune systems, but anyone who catches the virus can get it.

The New York Times reports:

Five years — and hundreds of millions of cases — after the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 pandemic, scientists are getting a clearer picture of how the virus can affect the body long after an infection seems to pass.

Some of Covid’s effects became apparent soon after the virus began spreading. We quickly understood how deadly an infection could be, especially for those with underlying conditions like diabetes and heart disease. But it has taken years of research to start making sense of how a bout of Covid can lead to lasting, sometimes invisible changes in different parts of the body.

Some of these effects, such as chronic fatigue and brain fog, are considered long Covid, defined as symptoms from an infection that persist for at least three months. By some estimates, 400 million people worldwide have been diagnosed with some form of long Covid. But an infection can also lead to other issues, including lung and heart damage and microbiome changes in the gut, that may not always be recognized as long Covid but can still have a lasting effect on our health.

There much more at both links.