News from South Asia

[Hutan]

A useful report from Lahore, Pakistan, surveying people who have had mild Covid-19.

Follow-up of COVID-19 Recovered Patients with Mild Disease
from a team at the CMH Lahore Medical College

At a 3 months followup by telephone, 38% of men and 51% of women reported fatiguability.

Additionally, in more severe forms of the disease, the occurrence of the cytokine storm has proven to be a predictor of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) like symptoms in COVID- 19 survivors, whereas, for less severe forms of the disease, there is still a need to study the pathogenesis leading to the occurrence of the post-COVID syndrome which cannot be explained entirely by the cytokine storm.

Post-COVID syndrome warrants recognition as a medical diagnosis and henceforth, measures like rehabilitation, awareness groups, and most importantly, symptomatic treatment to be offered to patients even after culmination of the disease, especially in those with “mild” disease as they can often be ignored in the realm of the pandemic.

@Michiel Tack tweeted about the study here:
Possibility of ME or PVFS after COVID-19, Long Covid

 

[Hutan]

The COVID-19 Sequelae: A Cross-Sectional Evaluation of Post-recovery Symptoms and the Need for Rehabilitation of COVID-19 Survivors, 2021, Iqbal et al
Another Pakistan study of post-Covid symptoms, this one from Karachi. There's acknowledgement that some of the post-Covid clinical picture is looking like 'CFS/ME', and what happened after SARS and MERS. It's done only a couple of months after acute recovery, but the paper notes that followup will be needed.