TUCSON (KVOA) – University of Arizona researchers say the majority of people diagnosed with COVID-19 experience long-term symptoms.
Researchers looked at people with mild infections, which means they weren’t hospitalized, and found that up to 67% of people still had symptoms 30 days after their COVID-19 test positive.
Some of the most common symptoms were fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog, stress / anxiety, altered taste / smell, limb and muscle pain, insomnia, headache, joint pain, and congestion – the 10 most common long-term COVID-19 symptoms. Women developed a “long COVID” more often than men.
Until recently, most of the research has focused on patients with severe COVID-19. But now, nearly a year and a half after the pandemic, millions of Americans are experiencing “long-term COVID.”
Avid runner and businessman Ty Goodwin is one of them.
“It has developed and developed into a debilitating chronic illness, to the point where I now have a disability. As of this week, I have been officially unemployed, my disability has expired. So there are also overwhelming psychological problems with the argument with what I “I deal with,” Goodwin said.
Goodwin said he contracted COVID-19 in January 2020. He flew on business trips to Seattle, Montreal and South Africa with stopovers in Europe. He said he didn’t feel well after one of those flights but thought it was just the flu.
“That ended up going to over 100 doctor’s appointments and I had every medical test imaginable,” said Goodwin.
Long-term COVID-19 symptoms can be debilitating.
“Some of these symptoms are fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog, increased anxiety. Things that can really affect your quality of life,” said Leslie V. Farland, assistant professor at Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health who worked on the UArizona study Has. “We also found that people with a lower level of highest education and previous illnesses were more likely to report persistent symptoms after 30 days.”
Goodwin was a healthy 59 year old before the COVID-19 outbreak. He now suffers from a long list of symptoms including neuropathy, shortness of breath, chronic fatigue syndrome, and clinical depression. At first he said he had encountered resistance or disbelief in the medical community. But now he’s seeing doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and the National Jewish Health in Denver. Goodwin said that experience taught him to stand up for himself. He also Blogs about his experience.
Goodwin said his short-term disability had expired and he was now unemployed. He is trying to get a long-term disability but is unsure if he will qualify. At 59, he said he wasn’t ready to retire, but he couldn’t work.
The US Department of Health (HHS) and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) have issued guidelines on how “long COVID” can be a disability under ADA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.
Recently Scientific American wrote about the “tsunami” of disability caused by COVID-19.
Goodwin said he had suicidal thoughts but his family kept him alive.
“Most other diseases have a diagnosis and either a cure or an ending that seems endless,” added Goodwin.
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