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‘We have not seen long COVID’
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Posted on Feb 03 2022
Since the community outbreak of COVID-19 that started last October, the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. has not seen what’s being called “long COVID,” which means patients suffering from the after-effects of the infection long after they are first infected.
“We have not seen long COVID, although it has only been three months since our outbreak,” said CHCC chief medical officer Dr. John Tudela, responding to an inquiry by Saipan Tribune yesterday. “Over time with more cases, [long COVID] may be more apparent as more people suffer with lingering symptoms for six months to one year later.”
Also known as long-haul COVID, post-acute COVID-19, long-term effects of COVID, or chronic COVID, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines “post-COVID conditions” as a “wide range of new, returning, or ongoing health problems people can experience four or more weeks after first being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.”
CDC also said that even those who did not have COVID-19 symptoms in the days or weeks after they were infected can have “post-COVID conditions.”
Information about long COVID can be found on the CDC website at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html.
Tudela also said yesterday that the CNMI had one case of MIS-C, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. Tudela said that MIS-C is “kind of a delayed onset reaction to COVID-19 infection in children,” and described this as a rare occurrence. “We had only one so far and it is rare,” he said.
Last month, the Governor’s COVID-19 Task Force and CHCC reported that they confirmed the CNMI’s first case of MIS-C in a “COVID-19 Update” published on Jan. 12.
It was reported that MIS-C is a “rare but serious condition associated with COVID-19, in which different body parts become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs, and can affect children or adults.”
The patient tested positive for COVID-19 in December 2021 and reported symptoms in January 2022, said CHCC.
