And if you need another reason to try to prevent catching COVID, well, there's long COVID. Some survivors of the virus continue to experience symptoms such as shortness of breath, brain fog, and fatigue long after recovering from the virus. Dr Diaz says they've been in discussions to possibly start clinics for those still suffering.
Dr Melissa Diaz, Director, Public Health & Wellness
"Long COVID is real and long COVID, we're doing more and more research, there's research being done by different countries and different organizations as well, we're getting information, the way that COVID affects persons and the side effects or the lingering symptoms differs depending on how severe you had the symptoms but it's not only respiratory symptoms that persons present with, they may present with diarrhea, with vomiting, many people speak about the brain fog that they get, the lethargy so the tiredness that you get after the virus, some people have two to three weeks of feeling so lethargic that they can't get back to work so the different symptoms and the long COVID does exist, sometimes persons are re-hospitalized with infections of the lungs, with scarring of the lungs, so many times as well when you look at the severity of the initial virus or the initial infection that you got, people who were hospitalized or people with more severe symptoms have been reporting other lingers symptoms after that and in certain countries, clinics have started for long COVID and that is something that we are discussing and looking into with our hospital team as well to report to us if there are any persons who are presenting with some of these symptoms."
