RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Doctors and scientists alert that the post-Covid syndrome has now affected 1.4 million people in Brazil and is spreading like a wave in the ditch opened by the pandemic in one of its worst moments. Just as they alerted to the imminent shortage of oxygen, ICUs, and medicines in the country’s hospitals, professionals now draw attention to the risk of insufficient outpatient clinics and professionals to attend to so many people with sequelae of the disease.
Post-Covid syndrome refers mainly to the manifestation of symptoms for more than three months after the acute phase of Covid-19. Among the problems are heart attack, arrhythmia, depression, memory loss, shortness of breath, difficulty in thinking, fatigue and intense pain, chronic diarrhea, hair loss, and skin disorders. It can last for months. In milder cases it affects quality of life, in severe cases it can disable and kill.
“It is a crisis within the health crisis, and an overload for an already collapsed health system,” says Carlos Alberto Barros Franco, one of the first doctors to treat Covid-19 in Brazil and one of the most respected pulmonologists in the country.
Franco also points out that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1 in 10 people who contract Covid-19 develops the so-called post-Covid syndrome, characterized by the persistence of symptoms after 12 weeks. An even larger number of people, 25% of Covid-19 patients, experience symptoms for up to four to five weeks after testing positive, in what has been called “long Covid”.
In numbers, as of April 22 this equates to 1.4 million cases (14,172,139 total cases) of post-Covid syndrome and 3.5 million of long Covid in Brazil.
The permanence of some symptoms and the emergence of others in Covid-19 patients have been observed since the mid-2020s. However, this year the problem has taken on such magnitude that it has received its own classification by the WHO.
Barros Franco estimates that about 53% of people with post-Covid syndrome suffer from chronic fatigue and 43% from shortness of breath. Other frequent symptoms are chest pain, loss of smell and taste, chronic tinnitus, insomnia, joint pain, depression, difficulty in thinking, chronic diarrhea, skin lesions, myocardiopathy, heart attack, and diabetes.
“The syndrome is a tragedy in itself. There is a multitude of sick Brazilians with sequelae of Covid-19, some with symptoms even more severe than those of the disease itself. And they need treatment at a moment in which the entire health network is at its limits,” points out Barros Franco, whos says that not a day goes by without patients arriving with post-Covid problems coming to his office.
The damage characteristic of the syndrome is severe, in different organs, and of unknown duration.
“There are many individuals suffering and economic losses, with a significant number of people who will not be able to work anymore,” says the doctor, who coordinated an event dedicated to the post-Covid syndrome promoted this month by the National Academy of Medicine (ANM).
There, some of the most prominent specialists in the country warned that Brazil needs to establish guidelines and protocols for the post-Covid syndrome, as European countries and the USA already do, and as recommended by the WHO.
“Brazil, which did not prepare itself to face the pandemic, should not allow the situation to get even worse now with the post-Covid. The vaccine is fundamental and a priority, but that doesn’t mean the country can set this problem aside,” points out the president of ANM, Rubens Belfort Jr.
Main reason for consultation in the coming years
Everyone who has had Covid-19, especially those who needed hospitalization, should see a doctor 12 weeks after the acute illness. There are a number of tests that can detect complications, says Barros Franco
Experts have detected a high incidence of heart attacks and cardiac arrhythmia in the three months of post-Covid. The main challenge is that the Brazilian health care system has barely been able to cope with acute cases of Covid-19.
“I have no doubt that in the next 2 years post-Covid syndrome will be the main reason for consultation in several specialties,” says Barros Franco.
Science is still unable to answer, however, why some people develop the post-Covid syndrome. It has been observed that older age, severity of the acute case (of Covid-19 itself), and being a woman can be complicating factors.
But serious symptoms can occur post-Covid in people who have had mild or even asymptomatic cases of Covid-19, points out Flavio Kapczinski, director of the Centre for Clinical Neuroscience at McMaster University in Canada.
Carla Filippini, a 41-year-old communicator, knows well the long list of post-Covid syndrome symptoms. This week, she had yet another appointment with a pain specialist. After contracting Covid-19 her health has never been the same.
She became ill on January 4th, was hospitalized on the 13th with thrombosis in her left leg, and needed ICU. She was discharged 6 days later. But this was not the end of her problems. First came an intense headache that torments her to this day. This was followed by shortness of breath, insomnia, dizziness, intense muscle fatigue, memory loss, and reduced eyesight. She had two hospitalizations and four trips to the emergency room. April ends with no relief.
“It is permanent agony, with pain and not knowing when it will pass. It distresses me to know that many people suffer after-effects and don’t even know that Covid-19 was the cause of it all. The post-Covid period has been worse than the disease itself,” Filippini laments.
Source: Globo