Health personnel attending to a covid patient in the hospital.
The WHO identifies several conditions derived from having passed the coronavirus infection
Since the covid-19 health crisis broke out, conclusions have been drawn about the behavior of this new virus. Now that a large part of the population has passed the coronavirus infection in one or more of its forms and variants, the World Health Organization has established certain common sequelae among people who have suffered from the disease.
Because, once the acute phase has been overcome and the serious cases and, above all, the number of deaths have been reduced, the great problem left by the coronavirus pandemic is determining the volume of patients with
persistent covid and the kind and intensity of its aftermath.
According to the WHO, the symptoms of coronavirus that can persist over time after having overcome the infection are fatigue, cough, loss of taste or smell or both, headache, chest pain and confusion or the so-called “mental fog”. ».
In this way, the most repeated consequences, which more than a million Spaniards would suffer, are
with loss of taste and smell, muscle pain and general fatigue. The work led by Professor Judith Rosmalen, from the University of Groningen, concludes that 12.7%, one in eight of those infected with SARS-CoV-2 maintain, at least eight months after the diagnosis of the contagion, a sequel of the disease, according to the results published in the prestigious scientific journal ‘The Lancet’.
This study agrees with the WHO in that the most repeated persistent ailments are loss of taste and/or smell, which is detected in 7.3% of patients, muscle pain, which affects 7.3%, and fatigue or general tiredness, which attacks 4.9%.
The other specific ailments derived from the virus are chest pain, difficulties or pain when breathing, tingling in the hands and feet, sore throat, the sensation of alternating hot and cold, and the sensation of heaviness in the arms and legs. .
The estimates advanced so far by some experts and preliminary works limit between 10% and 15% of positive patients with severe long-lasting sequelae. In addition, he points out that
the symptoms that reach their peak approximately three months after infection and that, from then on, stabilize and become chronic.
Of course, the researchers themselves warn of two limitations that require qualifying their results. They only study patients infected by the alpha variant, the main one of the first wave, so it is unknown if the delta and
omicron, responsible for most of the pandemic infections, have a similar impact.
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