A Barrie specialist says he’s alarmed by some of the lingering symptoms he’s seeing from some patients who became ill with COVID-19 early on in the pandemic.
And the scary part, he says, is he and his colleagues across the province just don’t know what to do.
Respirologist Dr. Adarsh Tailor, who also works at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre’s intensive care unit, said he sees one or two new people every day who complain of a wide array of troubles even though they tested positive months ago and thought they had recovered. Doctors and nurses are also among the ill with lingering symptoms.
“The vast majority of them actually weren’t sick enough to get admitted to hospital,” Tailor told BarrieToday. “These were people who got COVID who never needed oxygen, who never needed treatment with steroids.”
The symptoms they’re now suffering include shortness of breath, decreased exercise tolerance, joint pain and swelling. There are also neurological concerns such as fuzzy memory and fatigue.
He describes one woman in her 40s having such severe headaches that she’s having trouble maintaining her work.
Even though COVID-19 is a lung disease, it’s affecting other aspects of the body. And what surprises doctors is that the regular staple of tests — the CT scans, pulmonary function tests, blood work — show nothing unusual.
“The frightening part for me and my colleagues is we don’t know what to do with these people, there’s no treatment that we can recommend. We can’t even tell them if they’re going to get better,” said Tailor.
There has been concern worldwide about the lingering effects of COVID-19 for some people who have described as 'long-haulers.' And there are studies underway in attempts to look for solutions on whether blood thinners or if repeat courses of steroids might help.
“I’m worried that there’s going to be just an epidemic of these people afterwards that are nowhere near how they were prior to getting COVID,” Tailor said.
Because this is all new, whether or not these people will ever recover is unknown. And Tailor points out the science behind this virus will still take many years to develop.
If these symptoms continue, Tailor said those people’s lives — their occupations and their lifestyles — could be forever changed.
In the interim, the respirologist is recording what he is seeing in hopes that answers, and solutions, will soon be available.
“My suspicion is the number of these requests to have these patients assessed is going to start to go up,” he said, adding that will require doctors to then determine the definition of what a long-hauler is and what investigations are necessary.
“The tests have all turned to normal, but a lot of them haven’t. And that’s the frightening thing,” Tailor added. “It’s frightening to be a doctor faced with something that you don’t know what to do about it. ... You don’t even know what to tell people because you have no idea whether these people are going to get better or not.”
That lack of information hampers medical intervention.
With the gradual reopening of the economy and more of a return to normal after 16 months of pandemic wariness, Tailor said the concerns are far from over.
“I would encourage people, even at this point as things start to open up, to show a little bit of discretion” and continue with preventative measures, such as vaccination, hand hygiene and masking, he said.
The long-haulers he’s currently seeing are all from the first and second wave. Enduring symptoms from the third wave in which the variants dominated haven’t yet emerged.
The protections taken during the pandemic have reduced the number of patients who normally show up with respiratory concerns, and he’s encouraging the ongoing practice of hand-washing and mask wearing.
“My lung patients have never been happier about their lack of infections,” Tailor said, adding those who are sick do have a responsibility to reduce contact with others until they feel better.
