How to know if you have long COVID.
“Four months later, I still couldn't walk four blocks without becoming winded,” says Stern, 48. Five months after her diagnosis, her doctors finally gave a name to her condition: long COVID., or even chronic COVID. It's a general term used to describe the range of ongoing health problems people can have after their infection.
The most recent data from the CDC has found that one in 13 adults in the United States – 7.5% – have symptoms that last at least 3 months after they first came down with the virus. Another earlier report found that one in five survivors between the ages of 18 and 64, and one in four survivors aged at least 65, have a health condition that may be related to their previous bout with the virus.“There's no definite laboratory test to give us a diagnosis,” says Daniel Sterman, MD, director of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care andMedicine at NYU Langone Health in New York City. “We're also still working on a definition, since there's a whole slew of symptoms associated with the condition.
It's a challenge that Stern is personally acquainted with after she bounced from doctor to doctor for several months before she found her way to the Center for Post-COVID Care at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. “It was a relief to have an official diagnosis, even if it didn't bring immediate answers,” she says.