As the pandemic in the US slows, the fight against ‘long haul’ Covid is on

People sometimes called "long haulers" experience long Covid, post-Covid conditions, post-Covid syndrome — there's no settled name. There's also no diagnostic test, no specific treatment, no pill to take. And while research is ongoing, there aren't large, peer-reviewed, gold-standard clinical trials yet either.

 

Some people get better on their own over time, or symptoms can be treated, but for others, recovery remains elusive.

 

There are potentially hundreds of symptoms, including shortness of breath, fatigue, headache, fever, anxiety, depression, pain, a loss of taste and smell, difficulty thinking, a racing heart and many others.

 

Symptoms are not consistent. Doctors can't predict what symptoms someone will have or who will get them, and symptoms can change over time, or disappear and then come back.

 

"We don't really have a single treatment that addresses the underlying disease, because we still don't know what's causing the underlying disease," Dr. Mitchell Miglis, an autonomic disorders specialist who works with post-Covid patients at Stanford Health Care, said.

 

In February, the NIH launched an initiative to identify the cause, prevention, and treatment methods for post-Covid condition. In December, Congress provided $1.15 billion in funding over four years to support the NIH research.

 

The American Medical Association policy adopted last week also called for advocacy for more funding for research, prevention, control and treatment.

 

For now, a person feeling long Covid symptoms may be able to receive care from their regular doctor, or one of the post-Covid care clinics that have opened around the country. During a call with clinicians this week, the CDC said most conditions can be identified and managed by a person's primary care doctor, in coordination with specialists and such clinics.