By Asmau Ahmad
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says more research is needed into the ‘constellation’ of sometimes debilitating symptoms among people who have recovered from COVID-19.
WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, stated that the research will impact on global health systems.
Speaking at a news conference on COVID-19 at WHO headquarters in Geneva posted on WHO website, Ghebreyesus said the agency held a global meeting of patients, clinicians and other stakeholders last week to advance understanding of what is officially called post-COVID-19 condition or long COVID.
He said WHO released a case reporting form that would allow more data to be collected on long COVID in a standardised way.
“This will help to improve the understanding, surveillance and clinical management of the condition,” the director general said.
According to him, the independent expert team to study the origins of the COVID-19 virus has completed its trip to China.
“The expert team is working on a summary report which we hope will be published next week, and the final report will be published in the coming weeks.
“The number of reported cases of COVID-19 globally has declined for the fourth week in a row, and the number of deaths also fell for the second consecutive week.
“These declines appear to be due to countries implementing public health measures more stringently,” he said.
Also speaking, Team Lead, Health Care Readiness at WHO, Dr Janet Diaz, said it is known that the post-COVID-19 condition is a heterogenous group of symptoms that occur after the acute illness.
“So, these are symptoms or complications that can happen potentially a month after, three months after, or even six months after and as we are learning more, we are trying to understand the real duration of this condition,” he said.
Citing reported symptoms such as neurological and physical illness, Diaz noted that an unspecified number of sufferers had been unable to return to work, once they had recovered from the acute sickness caused by the new coronavirus.
“We are concerned obviously with the numbers of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus that the numbers, just by the magnitude of the pandemic, will impact health systems,” he said.
