Long COVID can cause more than 200 symptoms and a positive COVID-19 test is not necessary to make a long COVID diagnosis, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that researchers say may not clear the air on guidelines for disability.
Symptoms of long COVID, including chronic fatigue and post-exertional malaise, cognitive impairment, often referred to as “brain fog,” and autonomic dysfunction, “can impair an individual’s ability to work or attend school for six months to two years or more after COVID-19 infection,” the Washington-based National Academies said in a statement on findings, going on to say it “can be difficult to clinically assess these health effects, or to determine their severity and effect on a person’s ability to function. They also may not be captured in the Social Security Administration’s Listing of Impairments, which is used as an initial screening step in determining disability.”
The academies also said that “(e)ven patients with a mild case of COVID-19 can go on to develop Long COVID with severe health effects” but that the risk is greater with patients who were hospitalized with the virus.
“Diagnosing, measuring, and treating Long COVID is complicated,” Paul Volberding, professor emeritus in the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and chair of the committee that wrote the report, said in the statement. The disease “can present differently from person to person and can either resolve within weeks or persist for months or years.”
