A new study just published in the journal Nature says that people who have contracted and recovered from Coronavirus safely and even asymptomatically at home, eventually experience a substantial loss of health that affects more than just their lungs.

These are conditions that so far can last for many months, develop into chronic illnesses and even increase the risk of death.

The research is the largest ever conducted and analyses the medical records of no fewer than 73,000 people in the United States who contracted Coronavirus between March and November and did not require hospitalisation.

The results reveal that between one and six months after becoming infected, those patients were 20 per cent more likely to need outpatient medical care and had up to a 60 per cent higher risk of death than those who did not get the virus.

A variety of symptoms

And we’re not just talking about lung or respiratory conditions, which are relatively common. We are talking about ailments that affect virtually any organ or part of the body.

From neurological to cardiovascular to gastrointestinal problems. And there is also an increased risk of mental health problems such as anxiety and sleep disorders.

In short, a wide range of long-term medical problems that those studied have never suffered from before.

So many new ailments were found in those who were studied that one of the study’s authors, Dr Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of the research and development service at the VA St Louis Health Care System, said: “We found it all”.

And developments in the lives of sufferers, such as diabetes, kidney disease and some heart problems, look set to be chronic and require them to be on treatment for the rest of their lives.

Why do the after-effects of the virus continue?

There are patients with respiratory problems, others with continuous headaches, permanent fatigue, stomach ailments, difficulties in concentrating.

“We see that somehow the consequences of the virus have not disappeared, but we don’t understand what the underlying cause might be. We don’t know what causes it or whether it will last, because we haven’t found any identifiable answers among those affected.

Of course, when drawing conclusions it is necessary to make a caveat with respect to the sample with which the study was carried out. The group was majority white, male patients with an average age of 61.

However, the conclusions are not misleading and as the head of infectious diseases at Brown University said, “we have hundreds of thousands of people with an unrecognised syndrome that can affect every organ system in the body and we’re trying to learn about it”.

Increase in patients

The first conclusion of this study is that “the health system is not made to deal with something like this”.

At the moment, the number of visits to the outpatient clinics of those who have recovered from Covid without major complications is one and a half times higher than that of the general population. This is already a major problem, as there are millions of people who are and will be in need of the health system.

In addition, the vast majority of them have to go from the primary care doctor to the specialist, as the symptoms do not subside easily and at least some of those who were never hospitalised still experienced virtually every category of symptoms, from chest pain to shortness of breath, diabetes and muscle weakness.

Researchers have identified respiratory and several other conditions, including nervous system and neurocognitive disorders, mental health disorders, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, general malaise, fatigue, musculoskeletal pain and anaemia.

And in response, the research also found increased use of various therapies and medications including analgesics (opioid and non-opioid), antidepressants, anxiolytics, antihypertensives and oral hypoglycemics.

As one of the study’s authors says: “What we will face in the coming years, perhaps even decades, is the effect of the pandemic on people’s long-term health. And we need to know what to expect”.

“If we were caught off guard by the coronavirus, let’s not be caught off guard by Covid in the long term, which affects many millions of people”.