But a small group of people infected with the virus end up with something called long COVID. “Some of the most common symptoms of the condition after COVID-19, or as you said, long-term COVID-19, include shortness of breath, cognitive impairment, which people call brain fog, and fatigue,” said Dr. Janet Diaz. according to a post by the World Health Organization (WHO). “These are the three most common. However, there have been more than 200 symptoms that have actually been reported in patients. So this list is quite long. Thus, other symptoms that patients or people may experience include things like chest pain, such as speech problems, some have described anxiety or depression, muscle aches, fever, loss of smell, loss of taste. “So the list is quite long, but these first three are the ones that have been described,” he said. Researchers are trying to figure out why some people have been suffering from COVID for a long time. Now, new research in a Canadian trial “has identified a possible underlying culprit that causes some people to continue to have respiratory problems for months after COVID-19 infection,” according to a new report. “A team of researchers based at five centers across Ontario has zeroed in on a tiny abnormality in the way oxygen is transported from the lungs and blood vessels of long-term patients with COVID in their test,” Global News reported. “This abnormality could explain why these patients experience shortness of breath and are unable to perform strenuous activities,” said Grace Parraga, lead researcher at Canada’s First Lung Imaging Center at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University. “All of these patients have had this disorder. “Everyone had very serious symptoms, so their exercise scores were low, they had shortness of breath when they exercised and when we measured their blood oxygen levels at their fingertips after exercise, it was also low,” he said. “These feelings of shortness of breath are perfectly consistent with our finding that we are not transporting oxygen as efficiently as we should,” he told the Canadian publication. “It is very exciting for us to find something that is really wrong – that it is in the patient’s lungs and not in his head,” Parraga said. Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as a White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the author of the Drudge report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.
