Car­la was wor­ried. Late­ly, her aunt had been com­plain­ing about headaches, heart pal­pi­ta­tions, feel­ing ex­treme­ly tired and hav­ing trou­ble con­cen­trat­ing. At first, Car­la sus­pect­ed that Aun­ty Jean was de­pressed af­ter los­ing her broth­er and nephew to COVID-19. How­ev­er, af­ter two months and sev­er­al tests lat­er, Aun­ty Jean’s doc­tors still could not ex­plain what was wrong.

Car­la stared out the win­dow. Aun­ty Jean was vac­ci­nat­ed, but was it pos­si­ble that she had con­tract­ed the virus and was suf­fer­ing long term ef­fects? Car­la de­cid­ed to call her cousin who was a doc­tor to talk about how they could help aun­ty.

What is Post COVID-19 con­di­tion?

Car­la’s cousin ex­plained that the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion now us­es the term Post COVID-19 to de­scribe the con­di­tion pop­u­lar­ly known as “Long COVID”. Some­one with Post COVID-19 ex­pe­ri­ences symp­toms even af­ter re­cov­er­ing from COVID-19 and, like aun­ty, their symp­toms can­not be ex­plained by any oth­er di­ag­no­sis. Some peo­ple who had mild cas­es of COVID-19 still end up with symp­toms of post-COVID con­di­tion.

The long-term ef­fects can be phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al or neu­ro­log­i­cal, that is, af­fect­ing the brain. Stud­ies have found that old­er per­sons like aun­ty should en­sure they are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and, if agreed to by their physi­cian, they should re­ceive ad­di­tion­al vac­cine shots. Re­searchers re­cent­ly dis­cov­ered that ‘break­through cas­es’ (ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple who con­tract the virus) are less like­ly to lead to long-haul COVID-19.

Car­la hung up the phone and thought about all the in­for­ma­tion her cousin had shared. She knew what she had to do. She di­alled Aun­ty Jean’s num­ber. “Aun­ty Jean? Let’s talk about all these pains you are get­ting. And I think we need to dis­cuss go­ing to the health cen­tre for an ad­di­tion­al dose of the vac­cine!”

Vac­ci­nate to­day....live to­mor­row!

Did you know?

- Glob­al­ly, there are dozens of re­port­ed symp­toms of Post COVID-19. These in­clude fa­tigue, chest pains, dizzi­ness, mus­cle pain, heart pal­pi­ta­tions, anx­i­ety, de­pres­sion, loss of mem­o­ry and brain fog.

- Med­ical ex­perts ad­vise more ex­er­cise, sleep and re­lax­ation tech­niques to com­bat long-term ef­fects of COVID-19 and im­prove qual­i­ty of life. How­ev­er, spe­cif­ic goals should be set. So it is bet­ter to say, “I will do at least 20 min­utes of ex­er­cise every day,” rather than “I need to ex­er­cise more.”

- Re­search led by King's Col­lege, Lon­don sug­gests that be­ing ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed against Covid-19 not on­ly cuts the risk of catch­ing it, but al­so of an in­fec­tion turn­ing in­to post-COVID con­di­tion.

Choose the facts. Choose life.