What factors can prolong symptoms?

Most people who are infected with COVID-19 don’t require hospitalization and make a full recovery within a couple of weeks. However, some continue to experience symptoms for weeks, and even months, after infection. Most hospitalized persons, especially those in an “acute stage” requiring intensive care, are expected to have longer recovery periods. They also may experience symptoms in their “post-acute” stage of the virus, which is when they no longer test positive for the virus.

But many people who did not require hospitalization also continue to have persistent symptoms many weeks and even months after the initial infection. The term “long haulers” has been used by patient groups to describe people suffering with this condition, and the condition itself has been termed LONG COVID.

Those experiencing long-term effects report a variety of symptoms. The most common is fatigue, usually accompanied with a series of other symptoms, which may include cough, shortness of breath, trouble with memory and concentration, pain in muscles, joints or chest, fever, exercise intolerance, disordered sleep, diarrhea, headache, abnormal sensations such as tingling and loss of sense of smell and taste, hair loss, fluctuations in heart rate, anxiety, posttraumatic stress and depressed mood.

Some of these long-term effects can be quite severe and debilitating, affecting individuals’ ability to return to work and engage in their normal activities.

An initiative by the National Institutes of Health is focused on trying to answer complex questions related to why so many are affected. Researchers will study persons after their acute COVID-19 infection to try to understand the differences between those who recover quickly and those in whom symptoms persist.