The possibility of developing serious health issues in people who have ‘successfully’ recovered from covid-19 and omicron is making India’s top pulmonolgist worried about trivialising any post recovery symptoms as long covid.

“Every day, 50% of our OPD deals with post recovery complications such as tuberculosis and fungal infections from patients who have apparently recovered well,” said Dr Deepak Talwar, senior consultant and chairman, Metro Respiratory Center of Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine, Metro Hospital, Noida.
“Out of this, 20% of the cases are very difficult to manage as these patients thought these were symptoms of long covid and ignored it,” said Dr Talwar.

Long covid is a condition where people who have recovered from the disease experience temporary health issues such as shortness of breath, cognitive dysfunction and brain fog. The World Health Organisation describes long covid time frame as anywhere between three to nine months. The assumption is that these symptoms will disappear, automatically, without any medical intervention.

However, according to Dr Talwar, who has been a pulmonologist for over 30 years, this approach is far from ideal and can sometimes prove fatal for patients. “Ultimately 30% of such (long covid) cases can get serious, because they were ignored,” he said.

A study published in the journal of Lung India, last year, warns of a parallel epidemic of post covid syndrome or long covid emerging in the country. It suggests that up to 88% of covid-19 survivors in the country may have this syndrome. India, incidentally, has a recovery rate of over 90% with 4.2 crores out of the 4.3 crore pandemic cases reported.
Even people who recover from omicron, a less severe strain than the previous covid-19 variants, can experience immunity loss, making recovered patients vulnerable to future diseases, more than ever. Hence it’s important that people reach out to doctors and get investigated upon, instead of waiting for the symptoms to disappear on its own, said Dr Talwar.

A Multisystem Disorder

What makes covid-19 and its variants so difficult to manage is the complex nature of the disease.

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