The termination of the coronavirus public-health emergency signals that the pandemic’s worst days likely lie behind us. Yet COVID-19 still claims some 500 lives daily in the United States (double that of the flu), and millions continue to struggle with the effects of PCC (post-COVID-19 condition), or long COVID-19.
Long COVID affects an estimated 8 million to 23 million Americans, who suffer varied symptoms four weeks or more after initial infection, according to researchers. Those symptoms can include chronic fatigue, brain fog, sleep difficulties, and other respiratory, heart, neurological, and digestive issues, as well as diabetes and kidney disease.
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A study published in the JAMA Internal Medicine in February, however, suggested that a healthy lifestyle can lessen the likelihood of contracting long COVID by almost half and reduce by 30 percent developing severe symptoms. Positive lifestyle factors include a healthy BMI (body mass index), not smoking, at least two and a half hours of moderate to vigorous exercise weekly, low alcohol intake, a high-quality diet, and adequate sleep.
Still, long COVID can strike most anyone, according to Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, director of clinical epidemiology at the Washington University School of Medicine, who for three years has been among a national vanguard of researchers studying and fighting long COVID.
“We’ve seen kids with long COVID and a 101-year-old veteran with long COVID,” says Al-Aly. “Regardless of age and sex and race, all people are vulnerable to this.” He adds that chronic fatigue and brain fog symptoms may be more pronounced in younger patients while heart problems, metabolic dysfunction, and kidney disease are more evident in older adults.
Yet he remains optimistic in the fight against COVID-19, in all of its manifestations.
“Back in early 2020, there was literally zero immunity in the world and the United States, and we had zero prevention strategies,” he says. As a result, a staggering number of people were infected—some 700 million worldwide and counting.
But now, as we develop immunity, vaccines, and strategies to control and treat COVID-19, the scale of infection is declining. “We’ve made a lot of progress. It’s a very different landscape now,” says Al-Aly, “remarkably different.”
As to long COVID, where his work has largely focused, he has seen significant advances.
“Things in the pipeline that we and other groups are working on give us hope that we can help people to reduce their risk, prevent long COVID-19, and take long COVID from people who already have it,” says Al-Aly.
In the interim, he advises vaccination to help protect against it. “If you haven’t been vaccinated, you should definitely consider it because it reduces the risk of long COVID and adverse outcomes,” he says.
But the best way to prevent getting long COVID is to not get COVID-19 in the first place, says Al-Aly (and avoid getting a COVID-19 reinfection, which increases the risk of long COVID.) That means using common sense and consider wearing a mask even if you feel it’s a nuisance, he says, particularly in enclosed crowded places, such as planes, subways, and metros.
“I still wear a mask in public places,” says Al-Aly. “It protects me, and, most importantly, it protects the vulnerable next to you at the grocery store, perhaps an immuno-compromised patient who has to shop for his or her family.”
