NEW YORK (AP) – COVID-19 came early for Catherine Busa, and it never really left.
The 54-year-old school secretary in New York City had no underlying health problems when she contracted the coronavirus in March and was recovering in her Queens home.
But some symptoms persisted: fatigue she never experienced from getting up at 5 a.m. for work for years; pain, especially in her hands and wrists; an altered sense of taste and smell that made food unappealing; and an emerging depression. After eight months of suffering, she went to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center – to a clinic dedicated to post-COVID-19 care.
“I felt in some kind of hole and I couldn’t look from the bright side,” Busa said. Visits to other doctors did not help her. But in the clinic it was different.
“They confirmed how I felt,” she said. “That helped me push through everything I fight against.”
The clinic is one of dozens of such facilities that have sprung up in the US to address a puzzling aspect of COVID-19 – the effects that can persistently strike some people weeks or months after the infection itself clears.
The approaches to the programs vary, but they share the goal of understanding, treating, and credible with patients who cannot be released from the virus that infected more than 24 million Americans and killed approximately 400,000 people.
“We know this is real,” said Dr. Alan Roth, who supervises the Jamaica Hospital clinic. He’s been struggling with body aches, fatigue and “brain fog,” marked by occasional forgetfulness since his own relatively mild bout with COVID-19 in March.
Like so many other things in the pandemic, the scientific picture of the so-called long-haul vehicles is still developing. It’s not clear how common long-term COVID problems are or why some patients continue to suffer and others don’t.
Current indications are that up to 30% of patients still have significant problems interfering with daily life two to three weeks after a positive test. Perhaps as many as 10% are still suffering three to six months later, according to Dr. Wesley Self, an emergency physician and researcher from Vanderbilt University who co-wrote a July report. of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Doctors have known for months that intensive care patients can undergo long-term recovery. But many COVID-19 long haul carriers were never seriously ill.
At the University of Texas Medical Branch’s post-COVID-19 clinic in Clear Lake, patients range from the ages of 23 to 90. Half were never hospitalized, said the clinic’s director, Dr. Justin Seashore .
“They were told to feel better, and they didn’t,” he said. Instead, they were left with fatigue, shortness of breath, anxiety, depression, difficulty concentrating, or other problems they didn’t have before.
Some were told they should use oxygen for the rest of their lives. A highlight was helping many of them get rid of it through treatment that could include respiratory therapy, occupational therapy, mental health check-ins, and more, Seashore said.
Long-term COVID-19 care has been launched in settings ranging from major research hospitals such as New York’s Mount Sinai, which has more than 1,600 patients, to St. John’s Well Child and Family Center, a network of community clinics in southern Los Angeles.
Rather than specifically targeting patients who still feel sick, St. John’s aims to schedule a physical exam, health visit and monthly follow-ups with everyone who tests positive at one of its clinics, CEO said Jim Mangia. Nearly 1,000 patients have come in for exams.
Since Luciana Flores contracted the virus in June, she has been struggling with back pain, stomach problems, shortness of breath and worries. The mother of three lost her job at a laundry during the pandemic and she doesn’t feel well enough to look for work.
St. John’s helped, she said, by diagnosing and treating a bacterial infection in her digestive system.
“I think it’s very important that other patients receive the same care,” said Flores, 38, through a Spanish interpreter. ‘I don’t feel the same. I don’t think anything will ever be the same, but there’s no other way to do it: I have to keep moving forward. “
There is no proven long-term cure for COVID problems. But clinics want to provide relief, not least by giving patients a place to turn to when their usual doctor can’t help.
“We wanted to create a place where patients could get answers or feel heard,” even when there are unanswered questions, said Dr. Denyse Lutchmansingh, the chief clinical physician at Yale Medicine’s Post-COVID Recovery Program.
At the Jamaica Hospital Program, patients receive mental health assessments, the attention of a lung specialist, and physical exams that go deeper than most into their lifestyle, personal circumstances, and sources of stress. Hundreds of people have been treated so far, Roth said.
The idea is to help patients “build their own healing capacity,” said Dr. Wayne Jonas, former director of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. He now works at the Samueli Foundation, a California-based nonprofit that works with the hospital to combine alternative ideas with conventional medicine.
The long-haul planes get training and diet plans and group or individual mental health sessions. Recommendations for supplements, breathing exercises, and meditation are also likely. That is in addition to any prescriptions, referrals, or first-line follow-ups deemed necessary.
‘We’re not just saying,’ It’s all in your head and we’re going to throw herbs and spices at you, ” ‘Roth said. Without a tidy, proven answer to the complex of symptoms, “we are doing common sense and taking the best of what is available to treat these people.”
Busa was given a test that showed she has sleep apnea, which causes people to stop breathing during sleep and often feel fatigued when awake. She is given a device and uses wrist braces and injections to ease her pain. Her program also includes psychotherapy appointments, supplements, and new daily routines such as walking, cycling on an exercise bike, and writing in a journal about what she should be grateful for.
Busa senses she is coming, especially regarding her mood, and thanks the clinic.
“There’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said, “and there are people and doctors out there who can deal with you.”