Michele Hart was diagnosed with COVID-19 last May. She was still struggling with a range of symptoms when we spoke with her several months later.

“A lot of nerve pain, dizziness, really affected my heart rate, my blood pressure,” Hart said. “Never had blood pressure issues but it gets up to, yesterday it was 240 over 135 and I ended up in the emergency room again.”

Despite being cleared of the illness, the Colorado resident continues to live with COVID-19 to this day.

“That seems to baffle a lot of people,” Hart said. “People haven’t heard of that being a part of COVID. It’s been sort of my lived experience.”

Symptoms lingers for Carolene Quezada also.

“The taste and smell, I still have no sense of smell,” she said. “It’s a scary feeling because I’m a healthy person, I have no underlying conditions whatsoever.”

Long-hauler syndrome or long COVID, as it’s known, has become all too common during the pandemic. Those who experience it report everything from fatigue to depression to brain fog. Every person is different. One study found 30% of those with COVID-19 still reported persistent symptoms nine months later. A study in China found three-quarters of coronavirus patients had at least one symptom six months later.

“Previously healthy fit individuals who are quite limited and I think that’s what was really surprising,” said Dr. Sarah Jolley who directs UCHealth’s Post-COVID clinic. It’s one of at least 21 facilities run by U.S. hospitals and health systems currently treating people who suffer this way. 

Long COVID has become so prevalent the U.S. government has launched a major new initiative to study it and answer some of the most vexing questions surrounding it.

“How many people continue to have symptoms of COVID-19 or even as we’ve seen develop new symptoms that they did not have even as part of their acute infection?” Dr. Anthony Fauci with the U.S. National Institutes of Health wondered recently.

What causes the syndrome, inflammation, immune system overreaction, or something else?

“I think it’s an incredibly important public health issue for us to understand what recovery looks like,” Jolley said.

Her clinic was already in the works before the pandemic to treat patients whose time in intensive care has left them with medical deficits. The need is even greater now.

“What we didn’t anticipate at all was the number of patients that were non-hospitalized that would have ongoing persistent symptoms,” Jolley said.

Hart still suffers a range of residual symptoms. He made this plea last year:

“We really, really want doctors to begin to take our symptoms and our experiences more seriously, that they’re real,” she said. “I would love to have any type of help possible at this point.”

After months on a waitlist, she’ll visit UCHealth’s clinic soon as medical experts gear up to learn why symptoms like hers hang around for so long.

CGTN’s Hendrik Sybrandy reports from the state of Colorado.

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