Some Patients Are Reporting Long COVID Recoveries —But Experts Still Don’t Fully Understand Why

A few months ago, Lana Lynch had resigned herself to never getting better. Months after testing positive for COVID-19, she still felt fatigued, still got daily headaches, still had to carefully regulate how much she exerted herself each day. She was coming to terms with her new normal—until she didn’t have to. After receiving her second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in May, Lynch, a 32-year-old from Texas, noticed that she wasn’t quite so tired anymore. She could get through a yoga class without hitting a wall. “I felt like I had some energy,” she says, “but I didn’t want to jinx it.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] After weeks of waiting for the other shoe to drop, she says, “I feel confident enough to declare myself cured.” In recent months, a small but growing number of people with Long COVID—the name adopted by those who develop lingering health problems after catching the virus—are experiencing improvements like Lynch’s. These stories are anecdotal and far from universal. But after months of debilitating illness, even small improvements can feel like a new lease on life for those lucky enough to experience them. “Just knowing that it’s not really anchoring me down,” Lynch says, “is a huge weight off my shoulders.” Experts believe somewhere between 10% and 30% of COVID-19 patients develop long-term symptoms, including fatigue, chronic pai...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news