By Ashleigh McMillan, January 16, 2023
Health experts are calling for a rethink of Australia’s COVID-19 approach after a new study showed one in 10 people will end up with “long COVID”.
According to the report, published on Friday in the academic journal Nature Reviews Microbiology, at least 65 million people worldwide already have long COVID, or post-COVID conditions, which is when symptoms persist for more than 12 weeks after the initial infection.
It is estimated more than 10 per cent of those who catch COVID-19 will experience chronic health issues, with women aged between 30 and 55 particularly at risk.
Long COVID’s symptoms vary but can include severe fatigue, brain impairment and nervous system dysfunction, as well as nausea and shortness of breath.
Professor Brendan Crabb, an infectious disease researcher and CEO of the Burnet Institute, said the report was “jaw-dropping” and should prompt a rethink of Australia’s relaxed attitude towards COVID-19.
Each time a person is reinfected with the virus, they have the same likelihood of catching long COVID, he said.
An analysis by the US Department of Veterans Affairs of 150,000 people showed they had an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure and stroke just one year after catching COVID-19, regardless of how severe the initial infection was.
“Our clear national policy is to protect the aged, protect those who are immunocompromised, but in the rest of us, allow transmission to go pretty much unchecked,” Crabb said.
“But if you factor in long COVID, then we’re all vulnerable.”
Crabb said Australia’s political leaders needed to “change the narrative” around the risks of COVID-19, alongside a further push for booster vaccination, mask-wearing and filtered air.
The report’s researchers believe there are significant similarities between long COVID and some chronic health conditions, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and dysautonomia, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system.
Around half of the people living with long COVID meet the criteria for ME/CFS, the report says.
Three of the report’s authors – Hannah Davis, Lisa McCorkell and Julia Moore Vogel – have experienced long COVID themselves. Their co-author is American cardiologist Eric Topol.
“We need a comprehensive long COVID research agenda that builds on the existing knowledge from ME/CFS, dysautonomia and other viral-onset conditions,” the authors said.
“Robust clinical trials must be a priority moving forward as patients currently have few treatment options.”
Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, called the research “incredibly important” and hoped the review would raise awareness and progress research into chronic conditions such as ME/CFS and postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS).
Crabb said doctors should believe patients who present with long COVID because “the accuracy with which somebody self-reports is tremendous”.
“Long COVID is not some vague mysterious thing that you can palm off as psychosomatic, though many do. It is a very clear clinical illness with a biochemical and cellular underpinning,” he said.
Another key finding of the report is that those with long COVID often have “exhausted” or reduced levels of T cells, white blood cells involved in the immune response that target antigens.
Professor Stephen Duckett, an honorary enterprise professor at Melbourne University’s School of Population and Global Health, welcomed the first thorough review of long COVID research.
He said it was vital that the upcoming Australian Centre for Disease Control has a major focus on chronic conditions stemming from infection, such as long COVID and ME/CFS.
Duckett’s daughter developed long COVID in late 2020, and he said that throughout 2021, he was surprised there was little discussion about how long COVID could affect the health system.
“One of the consequences of the most recent pandemic is this mushrooming and dramatic escalation in the incidence of chronic complex conditions, which we really need to be getting our act together on,” Duckett said.
“One of the implications [of long COVID] is that predictions of demand, planning for health services of the future may need to look quite different from the way we thought.”
A federal parliamentary inquiry into long COVID and repeated COVID infections closed its submissions in November 2022.
Ashleigh McMillan is a breaking news reporter at The Age.
(Sources: The Age)
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