the times | Friday August 7 2020 2GM 13
News
Young people have revealed the
debilitating long-term consequences
they are suffering months after being
infected with Covid-19.
Previously fit and healthy people
who contracted the virus have
described to The Times their struggles
to overcome its long-term effects. MPs
were told this week that up to half a
million coronavirus sufferers are feeling
the effects of “long Covid”.
Sara Edwards, 26, from Cardiff, ran
half-marathons and went to the gym
five days a week before she became ill in
April. Ms Edwards, who works in oper-
ational management at the University
Hospital of Wales, said: “I still haven’t
returned to work as I’m still suffering
fatigue. We were led to believe that,
generally, you were only vulnerable if
you were elderly or vulnerable, which
made it such a shock for me.
“I couldn’t understand why I was still
ill. The doctors think coronavirus made
my blood thick — sticky blood — and it
has caused me to have a clot on my
lung. They think I’ve had a series of
microclots but because I’m young and
fit my body was able to deal with them.
“I don’t know why I’m susceptible to
it but others aren’t. I have some severe
food allergies, so my body is used to an
extreme inflammatory response when
I eat something it doesn’t like. Perhaps
it is related to that.
“I also have an inflammation in my
upper back, which is like a deep burning
sensation. The enormity of it has been
difficult to take, particularly as so little
is known about it. I’m used to being fit
and active, and some days I can’t even
do the cooking. It takes its toll on your
mental health as well.”
Josh Watkins, 29, a lobbyist from
Hackney, east London, who became ill
in March and is still suffering fatigue,
said: “I had been training for a
marathon when I got ill so I was very fit
— I used to do yoga and everything.
Now I can run for five minutes before
needing to stop.
“I have been hoping my chest would
get better but it’s still bad. I’m just
hoping it’s not permanently scarred.
Until recently I had a total lack of
energy and I’ve only just recovered my
sense of smell and taste. I could’ve been
eating sawdust and wouldn’t have
known. I worried it might have been
gone for ever.”
Jessica Baldrian, 21, from Bath, said:
“I’ve had a temperature touching
39 degrees off and on since the middle
of March. I isolated for two weeks and
couldn’t understand why I was still
feeling terrible. All this happened
towards the end of my university
degree and I’ve had to write course-
work in between bouts of being so ex-
hausted that I need to sit down after
emptying the dishwasher.”
Researchers will recruit today the
first of 10,000 survivors of coronavirus
and study them to understand the
long-term effects of the disease.
Rachael Evans, a pulmonologist at the
University of Leicester, is leading the
study and said that it would monitor
people who were hospitalised with the
condition and study them for between a
year and 25 years.
She said: “In my 23 years in medicine
I’ve never seen anything on this scale,
with such long-lasting effects.
Pneumonia is unpleasant but normally
young people will recover from it
within six weeks — we are seeing that is
not the case with this.
“It’s striking that long-term effects do
not seem to relate to how ill peoplewere. I saw a young man in [intensive
care] who was so badly affected he was
delirious but three months later he’s
walking around absolutely fine. I also
know another young person who had a
very mild case and three months later is
still very much struggling.
“Our study will monitor people for a
year and track things like the scarring
of their lungs, their kidney condition,
whether they are still breathless. We
are hoping that the study will be able to
report back quickly any findings so it
can feed back into how to treat it.”
This week the all-party parliamentary
group on coronavirus held a live evi-
dence session in which members of
Long Covid Support spoke by video link.
Claire Hastie, the founder, said that
data from the King’s College London
symptom tracker app showed that
between 200,000 and 500,000 people
were living with the long-term effects
of Covid-19 in Britain. She said: “Many
people in our group are being told by
their GPs that it’s caused by anxiety,
and it’s all in their heads. It can cause
anxiety, but it is not caused by anxiety.
The science needs to catch up with us.”
Researchers from Italy reported that
nearly nine in ten patients discharged
from a hospital in Rome after recover-
ing from Covid-19 still experienced at
least one symptom 60 days after onset.Lasting effects
Brain fog
Difficulty thinking can occur after
acute infection. Covid-19 may
damage brain cells and
inflammation may cause
neurological complications.
Shortness of breath
Doctors have observed lung and
heart complications, including
scarring. Patients who become
critically ill seem more likely to have
lingering shortness of breath, but
those with mild cases are also at risk.
Arrhythmia
The virus can harm the heart. How it
heals could help to determine
whether a patient develops an
irregular heartbeat.
Hypertension
Some patients have high blood
pressure after acute infection, even
if they were previously healthy,
possibly because the virus targets
blood vessels and heart cells.
Hair loss
Doctors say that this is telogen
effluvium, temporary but excessive
hair shedding that can happen after
an illness, surgery, high fever, stress,
extreme weight loss or giving birth.Two thirds of NHS medical staff lost
their sense of taste or smell during the
pandemic, suggesting that they have
been infected with Covid-19, according
to research.
Healthcare workers at Barts Health
NHS Trust in London were asked to
complete a questionnaire in the week of
April 17-23 detailing health changes.
At the height of the pandemic,
anosmia — loss of taste or smell — was
not an official symptom and testing of
NHS workers was limited to those who
had a temperature of over 37.8C or a
continuous cough.
Following data that showed anosmia
was a key indicator of Covid-19 Public
Health England added it to the official
symptom list on May 18 and NHS staff
with the symptom were required to test
and self-isolate for seven days.
The study, led by the University of
East Anglia in collaboration with Uni-
versity College London, found that 168
out of the 262 healthcare workers who
completed the questionnaire reported
losing their sense of smell or taste at
some point between mid-February and
News
Long recovery for
younger patients
Ben EllerySara Edwards, 26, continues to suffer
fatigue after catching the virus in AprilANDREW PARSONS/PARSONS MEDIAMost medical staff had key symptom
mid-April. Only 73 of the 262 partici-
pants had been tested for the corona-
virus at the time, with 56 of these con-
firmed positive. Staff testing for corona-
virus at Barts Health NHS Trust has
been available since late March.
Professor Carl Philpott, from UEA’s
Norwich Medical School, the study re-
port’s senior author, said: “This sug-
gests that a large proportion of health-
care workers may have already been in-
fected with Covid-19, with only mild
symptoms.
“We conducted this research at Barts
Health, however we would expect to
see similar results from other
NHS trusts too. Cases like this
most likely went undiag-
nosed because of a lack of
awareness about smell
loss as a symptom.
“This is really
important
because healthcare
professionals are at
the front line of the pan-demic and are at high risk of both con-
tracting and spreading coronavirus.
There is a need for awareness and early
recognition of anosmia as a means to
identify, urgently test and isolate affect-
ed healthcare workers in order to pre-
vent further spread of disease.”
The research, published in the jour-
nal The Lancet Microbe, also indicated a
“strong association between smell loss
and the positive Covid-19 test results”,
he said. People who lost their sense of
smell were almost five times more likely
to test positive than those who had not.
A follow-up survey in May found
that 47 per cent of respondents
had fully recovered their sense
of smell and taste. A further
42 per cent said they had
partially recovered
their sense of
smell and taste,
but just over
7 per cent still
suffered anosmia.
The survey has also
been running in hospitals in
Norfolk and in the north-
west. The responses are due
to be published soon.Katie Gibbons
Loss of taste and smell was
not listed as a symptom at
the start of the pandemic