Marcel Levi is an internist, chairman of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and professor of medicine at the University of Amsterdam.
Many people still suffer from fatigue, a bad condition and other complaints weeks after their corona infection. But how do you know if you have lung covid?
“You never know for sure, because there isn’t a test that shows you that. But it is very likely that you have lung covid if you do not recover after an infection, especially if you were always fit and healthy before that. By definition you can call it long covid. If you already had many health problems before your corona infection, it is of course more difficult. Because are your complaints due to lung covid or do they have another cause?”
What can you do if you think you have lung covid?
“First of all, you can go to your doctor, but they will probably tell you to be patient. Fortunately, in many places there are special physiotherapy programs that you can join if you have lung covid. What’s interesting about that is that you normally see in physiotherapy how far you can go. Then you try to stretch it a little bit at a time. The situation is different with therapy for lung covid. There is the experience that you have to build up very slowly. You just have to stay a bit below your maximum. That has a better effect than trying to push your limits all the time.
What is difficult about lung covid is that it gives a different clinical picture in everyone. One suffers from the lungs, the other from the heart. And many people also suffer from the mental aspect: poor concentration, the feeling as if you are walking around with cotton wool in your head. It is therefore necessary to map out very precisely what type of lung covid it is.
There is also a national center where expertise in this area is gathered: C-support† This center provides you with information and can refer you to the right places. Definitely recommended if you’ve already been to the doctor, but can’t get any further.
Fortunately, we see that a large group of people with long covid eventually recover, but there is also a small group of people who are not and they have had it for almost two years now. This group really needs specialist help. In academic hospitals, for example in Nijmegen and in Amsterdam, there are special lung covid outpatient clinics.”
Is lung covid different with the omikron variant?
“That’s a good question, because I sometimes hear people say that there is no lung covid at all with omikron. I do not dare to say that. I don’t think you can know that yet, because we don’t have those figures yet. Omikron has not yet existed for that long. I do think you can safely assume that it occurs less often with omikron. There are currently a lot of omikron infections, but we do not see that there are suddenly a lot of people with lung covid. That is why I think it occurs less often than with the delta variant or other, earlier variants of the coronavirus.”
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