The world is getting softer around the edges. It’s blurry and confusing – are you squinting at the screen or are your arms getting too short to read a magazine? Research published at the start of this year indicates rates of myopia are increasing so rapidly that it cannot be solely our genes that are changing, but the environment. “In our lives, we tend to do a lot more ‘near viewing’, particularly in education and our social lives,” according to Professor Jugnoo Rahi, the study lead. “At the same time, we do less distance viewing [outside].” That’s without taking the pandemic into consideration, with all that extra Zooming and squinting at our phones.
Add in the direct effects on eye health of Covid infection – one in 10 sufferers reports problems, such as blurred vision and sensitivity, and researchers have found Sars-CoV-2 directly affects retinal cells – and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that our eyes are struggling.
