More than half of the corona patients who are admitted to hospital are still affected by the infection six months after admission, according to research by the GGD Amsterdam and Amsterdam UMC. Three months after admission, four in five patients admitted appear to still have complaints, a spokesperson for the GGD confirms after reporting by Het Parool.
The complaints range from flaky skin, extreme fatigue and the feeling “as if there is an elephant on your chest,” the newspaper quotes. Other long-term COVID-19 complaints include chest pain, muscle pain, headache, palpitations, persistent fever, depression, forgetfulness, and a loss of sense of smell or taste. The last two complaints are said to be more common in people with a mild infection.
The UMC and the GGD received 500,000 euros to carry out the research. The healthcare institutions compared the complaints of 300 patients who were sick at home and those who were admitted to hospital. The research results will be sent to a scientific journal next week.
The percentage of admitted corona patients with long-term complaints after an infection is considerably higher than the percentage that can stay out at home. The RIVM reports that normally one in five people still experiences complaints five weeks after the positive test and that this proportion decreases over time.
However, it is not surprising that people who, for example, have been lying on the ICU have complaints for longer, because the virus has then caused more physical damage.
‘Percentages were so high, thought this couldn’t be true’
Medical researcher Elke Wynberg of the GGD nevertheless says he was shocked by the results. “The percentages came out so high that I thought this couldn’t be true.” In a similar English study, in which patients could report complaints via an app, only a small number of patients appeared to still have complaints after three months.
Wynberg says the Dutch study is more reliable because the researchers have followed the ex-patients from the time of the infection. The clinical picture was also “completely new” at the time of the English study, she continues.
RIVM also conducts research into long-term complaints
The researchers also concluded that overweight people have residual complaints for longer. One bright spot is that after three months no abnormalities were found in the blood in patients and the kidneys and liver seemed to function normally.
More studies are ongoing into the long-term consequences of a COVID-19 contamination. RIVM, among others, will start a study at the end of April to find out more about the number of people who have long-term complaints. Worldwide it remains to be determined how many corona patients are permanently affected by an infection.
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