Photo: Jason Rodriguez,(R), a University of Florida pharmacy student, administers a covid-19 vaccine to Larry Grier, a junior at Florida International University, April 15, 2021 in Miami, Florida. Credit: MPI10 / MediaPunch /IPX
Getting covid-19 has implications for long-term illness that is making employees stay away from work, and could cause other complications including dementia, stroke, and cognitive impairment, according to research.
About a quarter of employers in a U.K. study said that the effects of long covid have exacerbated the labor shortage. The world marked two years since covid-19 — the alpha variant — was declared a global health emergency on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO experts define long covid as a condition that “occurs in individuals with a history of probable or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, usually 3 months from the onset of Covid-19 with symptoms that last for at least 2 months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis.”
At least half of the people who survive covid-19 are long haulers, experiencing a variety of physical and psychological health issues for six months or more after their initial recovery, according to Dr. Corey Herbert, a chief medical expert at Black News Channel.
Research conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA) in November 2021 showed that half of those infected by covid-19 have experienced at least one long-haul symptom six months after the initial diagnosis.
The U.K. survey, which involved 804 hiring organizations with an estimated cumulative total of more than 4.3 million staff, found that one in four employers put long covid among the top three reasons for long-term absence. The study also found that half of those surveyed in the poll said they had staff who had suffered from long covid in the past 12 months.
The study, conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, also showed that a fifth of employers did not know whether any of their staff had experienced continuing symptoms from the virus.
“There’s a big reality gap right now between people who are actively staying on top of COVID research & those who just trust the current guidelines,” tweeted Hannah Davis, a long covid researcher at Patient-Led Research Collaborative for Long COVID, a team of long covid patient-researchers. “There’s no judgment here, but I’d like to try to communicate the worldview of the former based on what we know about COVID now”.
Davis said covid-19 predominantly affects harms blood vessels and blood flow, which impacts the nerves, immune system and several internal body organs including the brain.
Brain fog is a symptom of long-haul covid-19 or long covid and has been compared to chemo brain, the cognitive impairment that can occur after chemotherapy treatment for cancer.
“Even having *non-hospitalized* COVID increases the risk of 18 severe vascular conditions, including strokes, heart failure, clots, embolisms,” Davis tweeted. “COVID can cause severe cognitive issues and brain changes in people who had never been hospitalized.”
Photo: Jason Rodriguez,(R), a University of Florida pharmacy student, administers a covid-19 vaccine to Larry Grier, a junior at Florida International University, April 15, 2021 in Miami, Florida. Credit: MPI10 / MediaPunch /IPX
