'We're Struggling': Long-COVID Mystery Has Doctors in the Dark

This month, I took care of a patient who recently contracted COVID-19 and was complaining of chest pain. After ruling out the possibility of a heart attack, pulmonary embolism, or pneumonia, I concluded that this was a residual symptom of COVID.

Amesh Adalja, MD

Chest pain is a common lingering symptom of COVID. However, because of the scarcity of knowledge regarding these post-acute symptoms, I was unable to counsel my patient on how long this symptom would last, why he was experiencing it, or what its actual cause was. Such is the state of knowledge on long COVID. That informational vacuum is why we’re struggling and doctors are in a tough spot when it comes to diagnosing and treating patients with the condition.

Almost daily, new studies are published about long COVID (technically known as post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 [PASC]) and its societal impacts. These studies often calculate various statistics regarding the prevalence of this condition, its duration, and its scope.

However, many of these studies do not provide the complete picture — and they certainly do not when they are interpreted by the lay press and turned into clickbait.

Long COVID is real, but there is a lot of context that is omitted in many of the discussions that surround it.