Dear Editor,
British race car driver and Seven-time Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton after finishing third in the Hungarian Grand Prix a couple Sundays ago needed assistance to get to the podium because he had dizzy spells. He said after the race, “I haven’t spoken to anyone about Long COVID but I think it is lingering there. I remember the effects of when I had it [COVID] and training has been different since then. The level of fatigue that you get is different and it’s a real challenge.” Science journalist, Elie Dolgin, wrote an article in the journal Nature (June 9) discussing ‘COVID’s cardiac connection’. He wrote on the experience of a 19-year-old top ice hockey prospect, Marco Rossi, stating, “At pre-season training camp, Rossi failed his medical examination. A routine cardiac test revealed inflammation around the heart muscles, a condition known as myocar-ditis. If Rossi continued to skate, his heart might suddenly stop beating, and he could die. Although he felt well, it seemed that Rossi — or at least his heart — had not yet fully recovered from COVID-19, which he had contracted two months earlier.”
There are many reports of healthy young athletes (and people in general) contracting COVID and left with intense fatigue and other long-term symptoms that make it difficult for them to train and perform at their usual level even if they only had a mild form of the disease; some Olympic athletes even pulled out of the recent Tokyo Olympics due to prolonged COVID symptoms that significantly hampered their ability to train/exercise. The Office of National Statistics in the UK estimates a total of 945 000 (as of Aug 9, 2021) suffering from Long COVID and this includes 34 000 children with symptoms like fatigue and shortness of breath that have continued for at least four weeks. This led to experts calling for the vaccination of over-12s as they fear children will be left susceptible to infection as the majority of the adult population becomes vaccinated while researchers look for answers on the frequency and severity of this post-COVID problem.
To date, researchers are still trying to establish the science behind Long COVID (chronic COVID, long-haul COVID, post-acute COVID-19 or long-term effects of COVID) since it is not well understood. Hypotheses by researchers on what is going on include: after infection – fragments of the Coronavirus may disrupt the body in some way even if they cannot infect cells or, that the immune system goes out of control and attacks the rest of the body as every organ system in the body can be affected. Professor Akiko Iwasaki, an immunobiologist, and part of a group of researchers at Yale University in the US are recruiting people with Long COVID who have not been vaccinated. They want to track what happens after they have been vaccinated. They hypothesize that vaccination may improve symptoms by giving the immune system the boost it needs to clear the remnants of the virus away and rebalance the immune system since we know immunity developed after vaccination is more robust than natural immunity (if you get infected with the virus and recovered). There is a lot still not understood about Long COVID but what is known is that millions are suffering from it months after the infection is over and they test negative. According to the CDC in the US, people with Long COVID experience a different combination of the following symptoms, “difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, tiredness or fatigue, symptoms that get worse after physical or mental activities, difficulty thinking or concentrating (sometimes referred to as “brain fog”), cough, chest or stomach pain, headache, fast-beating or pounding heart (also known as heart palpitations), joint or muscle pain, pins-and-needles feeling, diarrhea, sleep problems, fever, dizziness on standing (light-headedness), rash, mood changes, change in smell or taste and changes in period cycles.
Many studies have been conducted which show that 1 in 3 people who get COVID will have symptoms that last longer than the usual two weeks. So, I want to emphasize and repeat that COVID exists and is a very serious problem which can have a long-term impact on your lives even in people with a mild form of the disease or who are asymptomatic (don’t show symptoms) initially. No one is safe from getting COVID and no one wants to be left with a series of debilitating symptoms for the long haul. The best protection we have against COVID is vaccination. It remains that the vaccinated have a much lower risk of getting COVID than the unvaccinated. Vaccines work and they protect. So, I urge people to get vaccinated (if you have no underlying health conditions) and keep upholding public health measures to break chains of transmission and reduce the spread. COVID can have long-term impacts on health and this applies to everyone of every age group, even the young, fit and athletic.
Sincerely,
Jacquelyn Jhingree, PhD.
