LONG AFTER COVID

Lingering symptoms after Covid-19 are very common and there's no cure yet, experts say

- MAXINE PETERS

SOME would say she's one of the lucky ones. She didn't end up in the hospital or on a ventilator. She didn't die. But more than two years after her bout with Covid19, she's still battling lingering symptoms.

When she contracted the virus in May 2020, Nita Collins* of Cape Town was sick for a few weeks and experienced "indescribable exhaustion".

Her symptoms included headache; shortness of breath; joint pain and brain fog and she also developed pneumonitis, an inflammation of the lung tissue.

Once the worst of it was over, she slowly eased back into her normal routine and believed she was on the mend. But the fatigue and joint pain persisted, and she knew something was seriously wrong.

"I just couldn't shake the feeling, Nita (48) tells YOU. "Before Covid, I was doing boxing once a week, Pilates twice a week, and now I can just about make it through a class but end up feeling like I'm going to fall over from exhaustion.

"Some days are better than others," she says. "Then all of a sudden I'll have a really bad day where just having a shower takes the life out of me.

"And then I think, 'OK, I don't actually know what's going on with my body now"," Nita says, adding that the feeling can sometimes be overwhelming and frightening.

Nita is one of many people battling lingering health problems after being infected. Mild or moderate Covid-19 lasts about two weeks for most people, but some continue to deal with symptoms such as shortness of breath, joint pain, and fatigue for months afterward - or even years.

It's also been expensive. Since there's no one treatment for Covid long-haulers, each time a new symptom rears its head it means a trip to the GP.

"At the moment, for the aches, I'm taking something that's actually a medication for gout which apparently helps," Nita says. "But each time I just get a script for something new to treat what I'm dealing with."