Chennai: Ever since Covid-19 started attacking the world, various studies are being made. Today, we see details about two such researches.
Patients who experience even the mildest illness risk suffering symptoms for months, researchers in France found.
Two-thirds of patients who had a mild-to-moderate case of Covid-19 reported symptoms 60 days after falling ill, when more than a third still felt sick or in a worse condition than when their coronavirus infection began.
Prolonged symptoms were more likely among patients aged 40 to 60 years and those who required hospitalization, according to staff at Tours University Hospital, who followed 150 non-critical patients from March to June.
Their study, published in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection, adds to evidence that a proportion of the 35 million people known to have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide will suffer lingering effects weeks to months later.
Post-Covid clinics are opening in the pandemic’s wake to cater for an expanding population of so-called long-haulers — survivors left with scarred lungs, chronic heart damage, post-viral fatigue and other persistent, debilitating conditions.
“We were able to assess the evolution of the disease and demonstrate that even the mildest presentation was associated with medium-term symptoms requiring follow up,” Claudia Carvalho-Schneider and colleagues wrote. “Thus, the Covid-19 pandemic will involve a care burden long after its end.”
Meanwhile, nearly 86 per cent of people who tested positive for Covid-19 during lockdown did not have any of the known coronavirus symptoms such as cough, fever and loss of taste or smell, a new UK study revealed.
The University College London (UCL) authors behind the analysis, published in Clinical Epidemiology’, conclude that a more widespread testing programme is therefore needed to catch silent transmission.
The fact that so many people who tested positive were asymptomatic on the day of a positive test result calls for a change to future testing strategies. More widespread testing will help to capture silent’ transmission and potentially prevent future outbreaks, said Professor Irene Petersen, from UCL Epidemiology & Health Care.