Page 36 - Bulletin, Vol.80 No.2, September 2021
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LONG COVID, THE PHYSICAL AND MENTAL
SEQUELAE OF COVID-19
By Docteur David Cohen, published in NEWS (AOMS)
Covid-19 (Coronavirus disease-2019), Hospitals (3) studying 700 people, 25%
a condition caused by the SARS-Cov-2 of whom were health professionals. The
virus, can give rise to physical and/or average age was 43 years and nearly
mental symptoms several weeks or 70% displayed no underlying health
even months after its onset: this form of problems. Six weeks after the
Covid-19, referred to as Long Covid (1), diagnosis, 33% of them still suffered
is characterized by intense fatigue, from tiredness, loss of smell and taste,
shortness of breath, headaches, or shortness of breath and cough.
insomnia, loss of smell or taste, The consequences of the disease are
neuromuscular disorders, problems of not only physical: a British study from
balance, concentration or vision, and the University of Oxford involving
also mental disorders, such as anxiety 62,000 people with Covid-19 (4), shows
or depression.
that 20% of patients displayed
As they become identified, these psychiatric disorders within 90 days
various sequelae – the pandemic is following infection: problems adapting,
barely more than a year old and we are anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic
still far from fully understanding it – are stress, depression, and even dementia
the subject of several international in some rare cases.
studies. On 9 February WHO organized Another study – the largest to date with
a virtual international seminar (2) 236,000 patients – reviewing the mental
specifically devoted to this question, assessment of former Covid-19
thus recognizing the existence of this patients, indicated that one in three
entity.
people who have overcome the disease
This Long Covid must "be considered of have been diagnosed with neurological
the utmost importance" for health or psychiatric disorders within six
authorities, said the WHO Regional months of infection, (The Lancet
Director for Europe. A study published psychiatry) (5).
in The Lancet, involving more than Anxiety (17%) and mood disorders
1,700 hospital patients in China, found (14%) were the most common
that six months later, 63% of them still diagnoses. The incidence of
complained of fatigue, 26% of difficulty neurological damage such as cerebral
sleeping and 23% of depression or haemorrhage (0.6%), stroke (2.1%),
anxiety. This post-Covid syndrome also and dementia (0.7%) was overall lower,
affects previously healthy people who but the risk was higher among patients
have not suffered from a severe form of who had been severely ill.
the disease.
While the risk to an individual of most of
These results emerge most notably these neurological and psychiatric
from the follow-up carried out since disorders is low, the effect on health
March 2020 by the Geneva University
AAFI-AFICS BULLETIN, Vol. 80 No.2, 2021-09 35
