How long-haul COVID harms thousands
When COVID-19 strikes, the worst outcomes, of course, are hospitalization and death. The best are that people face mild, temporary effects or are asymptomatic. But that’s not the end of the story: Some survivors, including many who had relatively easy courses of the disease, will suffer from what researchers are calling Post-COVID Syndrome. Researchers estimate that 10% of COVID survivors will become “long-haulers” — that’s as many as 20,000 Americans every month who will be burdened with the potentially lifelong disease.
This is a health, economic and social crisis on an unforeseen level, and the question facing hospitals and health-care providers now is how we address it and get long-haulers back on their feet. Our prospects for returning to normalcy and prosperity — in our health, our lives, our economy, and our institutions — hinge on it.
From our vantage point leading Mount Sinai Health System, we’ve been surprised to find that our average post-COVID patients are in their early 40s. Most were never hospitalized or placed on ventilators, and were previously healthy. This disease is leaving adults in the prime of their lives battling extreme fatigue, aches and pains, loss of smell and taste, migraines and organ impairment. They are unable to get back to work, school and life.
Last spring, New York State found itself at the front line of the pandemic, and quickly began to identify patients with chronic symptoms. In May, we started a first-of-its-kind research and treatment center dedicated to the study and treatment of people with Post-COVID syndrome. The center is designed to treat patients’ symptoms through rehabilitation and medication, and we also study the kidneys, heart and nervous system, including cognitive function, to find commonalities that may shed light on the disease. To date, we have treated more than 1,400 patients in the past nine months, but we know there are many more patients who will seek care.
Post-COVID symptoms are miserable, and they’re life-altering. We must now initiate research to determine the root causes of these devastating aftereffects and to find solutions that help our patients recover fully and get back to life.
In addition to our patients’ well-being, at stake here is the state of our economy and of the larger health system moving forward. The majority of patients who experience Post-COVID symptoms are in the prime of their careers, with families and loved ones to care for. Many COVID survivors report feeling too sick to work and participate in our economy — unable to go to the grocery store, restaurants and gyms. If we don’t get long-haulers back on their feet, the social and economic toll resulting from a generation of chronic disease sufferers will be marked.
The burden that lasting, untreated PostCOVID syndrome will place on our health systems will also be immense. Young people who otherwise wouldn’t have entered the health system with chronic needs until later in life, or maybe never, will suddenly depend on constant, costly care for their persistent symptoms, some even forever. Look at the COVID survivors now struggling with kidney damage, for example, many of whom require dialysis — an enormously costly treatment — for the rest of their lives. Already, hospitals have started running short on the machines and sterile fluids needed for the procedure. This is just a glimpse at the kind of stress our health system is facing, and it is a cost we can’t afford long-term.
We need Post-COVID treatment centers across the country, and we need them funded at scale. Like the systems developed to help 9/11 survivors grapple with their lasting health effects, we need the full support of our governments and communities to enact a full-fledged mission to treat COVID long-haulers. Like 9/11, COVID is a catastrophic event that has produced an enormous number of patients with very particular needs. Seeing them through to recovery is our responsibility, and it’s nothing short of urgent.
Thousands of long-haulers are battling for a recovery each day, and as we begin to think about the future, they must be at the top of society’s priority list. We must keep fighting to help those struggling with COVID’s aftereffects to fully recover and reenter their lives, jobs, schools and families. If we don’t, the impact will be devastating for our patients, and for society as a whole.
Davis is the president and chief executive officer of Mount Sinai Health System and a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Aberg is the chief of the division of infectious diseases for Mount Sinai Health System and a professor of medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.