If you’ve had COVID symptoms - like cough, body aches, fatigue, or “brain fog” - for more than four weeks, you might have Long COVID. With Long COVID, you may feel tired an experience body aches, you might forget things, and you may feel weak or quickly tire.
As the pandemic has been officially declared over and the restrictions lifted, it is important to remain up-to-date with COVID boosters for you and your family. These are especially important for those who are at greatest risk of becoming seriously ill with COVID variants -- children, those over 65 and anyone who is moderately or severely immunocompromised.
Symptoms can be different from person to person, because Long COVID can affect any part of the body and everyone’s body is made differently. For example, individuals who have health conditions like high blood pressure before getting COVID, may have different symptoms than people who have diabetes, or lung disease.
You can get COVID more than once, and have symptoms over a long period of time,. If you get COVID again and have COVID symptoms while you are sick, that is COVID symptoms. But if you partly recover from an infection and find that you still have lingering symptoms, or even new symptoms 4 weeks later, that may be Long COVID
Every time you get a COVID infection, you could also get Long COVID. The best way to prevent getting long COVID is to not get COVID in the first place. The same advice that you have heard for three years now still applies - get vaccinated, be aware of how much COVID is in the community now, and consider masking in crowded indoor spaces.
But did you know that if you do catch COVID (let’s face it, most of us have) Vaccination helps to prevent long COVID! So, even when vaccines become less effective at preventing COVID infections, they continue to reduce the risk that you will get long COVID and reduce the risk that you will DIE!
Laetitia Pierre-Louis is a Haitian American, deeply passionate about achieving health equity and tackling health disparities through education and policy change. She is the Director of Youth Programs at We Got Us, where she empowers young high school students in addressing health disparities in their communities.
