Long COVID can cause more than 200 symptoms, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and while a positive COVID-19 test is not required to make a diagnosis of long COVID, researchers said the report may not clarify guidelines regarding the disorder.
In a statement about the study’s findings, the Washington-based National Academy of Sciences said long COVID symptoms, such as chronic fatigue or post-exertional malaise, cognitive impairment (often referred to as “brain fog”) and autonomic dysfunction, “may impair an individual’s ability to work or attend school for six months to more than two years after COVID-19 infection,” and that “these health effects can be difficult to clinically assess or to determine their severity or impact on an individual’s functional ability, and may not be included on the Social Security Administration’s list of disabilities used as an initial screening step to determine disability.”
The academy also said that “even patients with mild COVID-19 symptoms can develop long COVID, which has serious health consequences,” but that the risk is even higher for patients who have been hospitalized with the virus.
“Long COVID is complex to diagnose, measure and treat,” Paul Volberding, professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and chair of the committee that wrote the report, said in a statement. “The disease varies from person to person and can resolve within a few weeks or last for months or years.”