in 3 years Pandemic mania has settled on rumbling hum. We got back to sweating each other in nightclubs, splattering birthday candles and sharing firm handshakes.Covid-19 is still very much alive, but thanks to vaccines and treatments, It has been reduced to an everyday threat to most people.
The same cannot be said for Covid, a mysterious and life-limiting disease that lingers after the initial infection of Covid. “We don’t yet have an established tool to help treat patients,” says Linda Geng, co-director of the Post-Acute Covid-19 Syndrome Clinic at Stanford University. Estimates for the number of long-term cases of COVID-19 vary, but are estimated at around 65 million, roughly the population of France.
Only now, three years after the pandemic, has a consensus begun to solidify about Covid’s longevity. And what it is, after all, is a lot. Rather than a single disorder, they are more likely to be multiple diseases that fall under one big umbrella. In other words, it is highly likely that there is no uniform treatment.
What causes a long Covid for you may not cause it for another. Triggered by an attack. This is a phenomenon called autoimmunity. So is one theory. Alternatively, viral debris may have been hanging around the body long after the initial infection, continuing to spin until the immune system’s engine is exhausted. It causes long-term damage to specific organs and tissues. Perhaps it’s that Covid infection reawakens latent viruses your body has encountered before, such as the Epstein-Barr virus that causes mononucleosis.
All these theories have some evidence to support them and may not be mutually exclusive. For some, these things may be happening at the same time. The idea that Covid has had many different causes for a long time may go some way to explaining the diversity of symptoms, which can range up to 200.
Based on this, researchers are trying to kill two birds with one stone. We are beginning to uncloud the inexplicable condition by testing treatments that give weight to certain hypotheses while at the same time mitigating the long-term COVID-19 pandemic. “The reality is that it’s very urgent and we have to do these things in parallel,” says Geng. “It’s building a ship as we sail, but we have to sail it because people need help.”
However, the hodgepodge of symptoms makes clinical trial design very difficult. Not everyone experiences all symptoms, and they vary in severity and duration. What’s more, there’s no consensus on how long to define Covid, says Steven Deeks, a physician and infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco. , it is difficult to decide who to enroll in clinical trials. Currently, the long Covid diagnosis works by exclusion. That is, to determine that the symptoms cannot be explained by another cause.
