There are 'at least' 50 symptoms of Long Covid, epidemiologist warns

18 March 2021, 19:03

There are 'at least' 50 symptoms of Long Covid, warns epidemiologist

By Fiona Jones

Epidemiologist Professor Nishi Chaturvedi is leading a study on Long Covid and shares the latest findings on the disease.

"The issue with Long Covid are there are at least 50 symptoms," Professor Nishi told LBC's Eddie Mair, with the most common being fatigue associated to breathlessness.

"There are many others like brain fog, joint pains, loss of sense of smell, heart pains, really a whole panoply of symptoms," she said.

The epidemiologist said sufferers are often incorrectly diagnosed due to the array of symptoms and the newness of the disease to the medical profession.

"What we're hoping to do with our research is to ensure [Long Covid] is better recognised and that people get the support, the tests and the interventions that they need," she said.

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The study on Long Covid will address the "big questions": is it one thing or a multiple of syndromes? What are the risk factors for it? What are the underlying mechanisms? What are the downstream effects in terms of health and family and working lives?

She added that Long Covid "does not just affect health."

Eddie asked whether there is any common thread amongst the sufferers, such as age groups or ethnicity.

Professor Nishi said: "One of the puzzling things about Long Covid is it doesn't affect the groups you might normally think of...it's more frequent in women than in men, often seen more frequently in people of early to late middle age, rather than older folk, there doesn't seem to be an ethnicity predisposition but these are early days yet."