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Patients line up at one of New York’s lengthy COVID clinics. People living outdoors in major cities would likely have to drive for hours to receive specialized care.
ZUMA Press, Inc. /Alamy Stockshots
The COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project, a patient group, has compiled a participatory list of more than 400 long COVID clinics. The list, whose quality was not verified through the group, ranges from rehabilitation or physical therapy practices to comprehensive medical centers with several specialists in operation. together. Science News used its list along with two other patient-compiled lists, and added the 53 NIH RECOVER study sites examining prolonged COVID in adults, confirming that they were all active in early October.
Physical treatment or rehabilitation-focused care can help COVID-19 patients who face persistent symptoms or weakness after an extended hospital stay. But other people with long-term COVID deserve to be wary of rehabilitation or physical therapy practices that inspire exercise, which can lead to “accidents” rather than recovery, says Karyn Bishof, a long-term COVID patient and founder of the Longhauler COVID-19 Advocacy Project. However, in some states, Alaska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Wyoming, rehabilitation centers are the only option for patients. In general, almost a portion of the clinics on this map are physical therapy or rehabilitation centers.
It’s not unexpected that other people living in big cities have the greatest variety of clinics. Of New York State’s 37 clinics, 3 are still in the New York metropolitan area. California’s 29 clinics are concentrated in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego. Fourteen U. S. clinics In the U. S. in children with prolonged COVID.
The two maps here, which pinpoint the long locations of COVID clinics and prolonged COVID prevalence across the state, reveal a mismatch between the need and availability of applicable medical care. In mid-September, about 1 in five adults in Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wyoming who had had COVID-19 reported experiencing long-term COVID, explained as symptoms for 3 months or more for a survey conducted through the U. S. Census Bureau. The U. S. Centers for Disaster Control and Prevention and the U. S. Centers for Disaster Control and PreventionU. S. North Dakota and Wyoming only have one long COVID clinic. Idaho has three. Oklahoma has six.
Getting to a remote clinic can be challenging for longtime COVID patients, especially those who don’t have a spouse or caregivers to help them with transportation and coordinate overnight stays. Bishof recently had to drive to an appointment that required only about two hours in every way, she says. When he returned home, “he fainted from excessive fatigue. “
Many RECOVER sites, funded through the National Institutes of Health for long-term COVID, also treat adults with long-term COVID. But most RECOVER sites are clustered in urban areas: of the 53 sites serving adult patients, six are in the city of Boston.
“It would be wonderful if we could get medical schools to start training those diseases,” Seltzer says, referring to long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS. Seltzer is director of clinical and medical outreach at #MEAction, an ME/CFS advocacy organization that also works with long-term COVID patients. The doctors most qualified to treat long-term COVID are those with expertise in ME/CFS and other post-viral situations that overlap with long-lasting COVID, Seltzer says. “Several studies have now shown that a portion of other people with long-term COVID meet the diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS. “However, there are very few of those specialists due to limited investment and care before COVID becomes the tidal wave it is today.
For Seltzer, clinics must offer comprehensive care through doctors in a variety of specialties who revel in the intense fatigue, pain, breathing problems and mental confusion that can occur with postviral conditions.
With expanded education for physicians, long-term COVID patients may one day be able to get care from their number one care doctors instead of waiting months for specialists. Bishof and other advocates are also pushing for the federal government to fund long-running COVID centers of excellence. , which would provide comprehensive care while working directly with patient teams to expand standards.
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National Center for Health Statistics. Largo COVID. hogares. www. cdc. gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/long-covid. htm Survey
NIH RECOVER Study: https://recovercovid. org/
Betsy Ladyzhets is an independent science and knowledge journalist based in Brooklyn, N. Y.
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