By CGTN Africa
According to Ugandan medical experts, a significant number of COVID-19 survivors are grappling with the long-term effects of the virus which has affected their productivity and quality of life.
The experts were reacting to a new report from the United Kingdom’s Leicester University which indicated that only a third of 804 COVID-19 survivors got totally healed after one year.
“The proportion of patients reporting full recovery was unchanged between five months (501 [25·5 percent] of 1965) and one year (232 [28·9 percent] of 804). Factors associated with being less likely to report full recovery at 1 year were female sex, obesity and invasive mechanical ventilation,” reads the report published April 23 in the scientific journal The Lancet.
Fatigue, aching muscle, poor sleep, breathlessness, joint pain or swelling, slowing down in thinking, general body pain, short-term memory loss, and limb weakness were the commonest symptoms that persisted in 2,320 participants discharged from the UK hospital between March 7, 2020, and April 18, 2021.
COVID-19 has so far killed 3,596 of the 164,069 it has cumulatively infected, according to Ministry of Health statistics. A total of 100,205 have recovered from the infection
Paul Kyaterekera, the president of Medical Clinical Officers Professionals Uganda, said it is hard to tell that a patient is suffering from long-term effects of COVID-19 because medical workers often don’t ask them or the patient may not be willing to disclose that information.
