At the start of this year Helen McLennan was working as an occupational therapist, completing her PhD and thought nothing of running 20 kilometres on the weekend.
That all changed when the 39-year-old caught COVID-19 at a triathlon in late January.
What started out as an illness "just like a common cold" got worse and completely stalled her life.
"At five weeks I ended up in emergency because I really felt like I couldn't breathe," Ms McLennan said.
"At my worst I couldn't even eat a meal, so I had to be looked after by my family – I remember eating half a meal and lying down to have a rest to finish the meal, so things were very bad."
After regular contact with her GP and having "every blood test there is" it became clear she had long COVID.
"I was looking at the prospect and thinking I might never exercise again, I might have to be on disability support payments because I couldn't see how I would be able to work again," she said.
Kate Young's COVID experience was different but just as devastating.
The 59-year-old emergency department nurse also contracted the virus in January and deteriorated so rapidly she was admitted to hospital the day after testing positive.
"I was in hospital just over two weeks and I was quite sick — when I went home I couldn't do much for myself and my family were helping care for me," she said.
"I just never seemed to really improve … it was like this slow horrible period of not remembering things, not being able to do stuff that I would normally do, get breathless all the time, sometimes for no apparent reason."
Long COVID 'incredibly hard' for sufferers
Both women eventually found a lifeline at The Wesley Hospital's long COVID clinic.
The multidisciplinary service started in July and has so far cared for 45 long COVID patients who were all internally referred by specialists at the private hospital in Brisbane.
The clinic is led by rehabilitation physicians and includes physiotherapists, exercise physiologists, occupational therapists, dieticians and psychologists.
Outpatient rehabilitation lead Matt Green said the team helped patients whose COVID symptoms persisted or arose after 12 weeks and could not be explained by another diagnosis.
The symptoms of long COVID are as varied as those struggling with it.
"The most common ones that we're seeing are fatigue, that cognitive effect – the brain fog – and that overall loss of respiratory function," Mr Green said.
He said the illness was "incredibly hard" for the patients, who were all vaccinated against COVID and had a median age of 51.
"We all thought COVID was this seven-day disease … but we're really now starting to understand the longitudinal effects of this type of respiratory disease and how variable that is and we still don't completely understand it," Mr Green said.
He said long COVID could strike people who were otherwise "functioning at a relatively high level".
"It's affecting their daily living, it's affecting the way they work, it's affecting the way that they interact with their families, it's affecting their income and it's affecting them just getting about their day-to-day life," Mr Green said.
"The statistics are starting to show us that one in five people overall will experience some form of long COVID symptoms, but we do know that increases to about one in four over the age of 65."
Long COVID is real
Respiratory physiotherapist Claire Gahagan said she is doing a lot of "breathing retraining" with patients.
"Some of them have a breathing dysfunction so teaching them how to breathe normally again, take deep breaths because a lot of them are feeling that they just can't breathe."
Ms Gahagan said the first step was to recognise and acknowledge long COVID is real.
"People are leaving that first session feeling more empowered, feeling more heard as well which I think is a really big thing," she said.
Ms Young said while she still had "a way to go" in her recovery, she felt like she had "improved 100 per cent" thanks to the clinic and hopes to return to nursing next year.
Ms McLennan also said she could see a light at the end of the tunnel.
"I'm really excited about the future now," she said.
But that excitement is tempered by a fear of contracting the virus again in the latest wave.
"I'm not going to my work Christmas party because I'm concerned about COVID," Ms McLennan said.
"It's not just a simple illness – it can affect people very significantly and we are going to be a burden on taxpayers if we don't do something to proactively prevent COVID numbers and to really properly treat people and provide support where it's needed as well."
Clinic opening to more patients
While most states in Australia have post-COVID clinics in public hospitals, the service at The Wesley is the only one of its kind in Queensland.
Mr Green said it was now taking referrals from GPs and would start seeing more patients from January 2023.
The service will not be available for free through Medicare.
Treatment at the clinic can be paid for through private health insurance or as an out-of-pocket expense for patients.
Queensland's Chief Health Officer John Gerrard said a research project was underway to examine the local impact of long COVID, with the data to be released after it was published.
"In Queensland, 99.7 per cent of all COVID infections have been due to the milder Omicron variant. In addition, these infections have occurred in an adult population that is 93 per cent vaccinated," Dr Gerrard said.
He said Queensland's long COVID figures appeared to be "significantly lower" than overseas as many reported cases relate to "more virulent earlier variants infecting unvaccinated or partially vaccinated populations".
He said the Queensland study compares the recoveries of people with influenza and COVID.
"Another difficulty with a lot of the published data on long COVID is there isn't a proper control group," he said.
"What you need is a proper control group, how they compare with someone with another diagnosis, or nothing.
"So that's what we've tried to do in the study that we're working on here in Queensland."
Dr Gerrard said GPs are "well placed" to support people who have ongoing symptoms after COVID-19 and those who have been seriously unwell and hospitalised with the virus could be "followed up and managed" through the hospital's rehabilitation service.
The House of Representatives Health Committee is holding a national inquiry into the impacts of long COVID and repeated COVID infections.
