Long Covid The Real Threat

From memory loss to chronic fatigue that can last for months, the duration of post-Covid complications remains a mystery

- Sonali Acharjee

On February 23, almost eight months after he first tested positive for Covid-19, Ashutosh Mukherjee (name changed on request) shocked his wife and two sons by telling them he had been having suicidal thoughts over the past few days. Life post-Covid had been immensely difficult for the 52-year-old bank manager from Mumbai who had a very mild case of the virus in June last year. “The only symptom I had was brain fog,” he says. This inability to concentrate made it twice as hard for him to perform sundry tasks. “Eventually, the extra effort it took for me to do something led to severe anxiety—I am always afraid I will do something wrong,” he says. Today, Mukherjee is undergoing psychiatric counselling and has been diagnosed with minor depression.

Mukherjee’s case is not unique. Several large-scale studies from around the world are now pointing out that ‘Long Covid’, or a set of symptoms that emerge during or after recovery, is a disease that can be far more long-lasting and diverse in its impact than previously believed. “Long Covid should be treated as a clinical disease in its own right. We need much more research on it to understand why it emerges, how to prevent it and how to treat it,” says Dr Anupam Sibal, medical director at the Apollo Hospitals in Delhi.