“The recognition of the long Covid in ALD allowing a coverage of 100% of the care must be facilitated”

Tribune. They have long remained the forgotten people of the health crisis. Even today, their pain and symptoms are often ignored, to the point of denial by part of the medical profession. The Covid is anchored in their daily lives, and some have already blown out the first candle of what is called “Covid long”.

Long-term Covid patients suffer from symptoms and disorders that have become chronic, sometimes very disabling. These manifestations disappear then return in violent relapses. New ones appear months later. The virus affects the respiratory system, heart, digestive system, blood vessels, central nervous system, or other organs. Marked by multisystemic disorders, overwhelming fatigue at the slightest physical or intellectual effort, oppressive pain, these patients no longer live as before.

500,000 French people concerned

According to the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS), about 10% of people diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 continue to have symptoms of varying severity three months after infection. In fact, at least 500,000 French people would be affected. And as if that were not enough, these patients face other hardships: months of medical wandering, significant impacts on social and professional life, significant financial expenses, inaccessible examinations, ‘waiting for months.

France must, like the United Kingdom thanks to the ONS, identify its long Covid by putting in place an adequate nomenclature

Left out of hospital services overwhelmed by severe cases, long-term Covid people must learn by themselves to list their symptoms, to collect information (scientific and press articles) and to help each other. The specialists they sometimes manage to consult are helpless in the face of these atypical symptoms.

For good reason: the mechanisms of the long Covid are still poorly understood. Nevertheless, hypotheses are advanced. Especially, for the National Institute for Health Research, there is evidence that the disease is still active for a significant number of people, with immunologic evidence of prolonged inflammatory responses, persistent viral activity or bleeding disorders.

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In France too, this research is progressing. At the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, the infectious disease specialist Dominique Salmon-Ceron study these tracks and collaborates with the Institut Pasteur on the hypothesis of viral persistence in the olfactory system.

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