UW Medicine Studying Long-Term COVID-19 Effects

What are the long-term effects of having COVID-19? Researchers at UW Medicine have been combing though peer-reviewed and even pre-print studies to try to understand that question.

Dr. Jennifer Ross, acting professor of medicine, infectious diseases, and global health, says it can depend on the severity.

"Generally we found that people who didn’t require hospitalization were less likely to report long term symptoms. But I would say there were really only a couple of studies we found among this population. And so we are looking to the studies that are under way right now to tell us a lot more
about how people recover."

For those who did undergo hospitalization, there were more severe complications though because the virus is so new, there is still a lot being learned.

"What we found was that even after a couple of months of hospitalization many patients were still experiencing fatigue, shortness of breath sometimes problems with their memory or difficulty concentrating. And
even some patients who don’t require hospitalization for COVID 19 are still having cough and fatigue several weeks after their illness."

Dr. Ross says it's a good reminder to do everything we can to prevent the infection from reaching ourselves and our communities.