“I feel better, but my mind isn’t the same.” Four years after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, such comments are still heard regularly in many medical practices in South Africa. What began as a respiratory virus seems to have left a lingering mark on some people who were infected.
In South Africa, more than 4 million cases of COVID-19 were confirmed. For some people, the physical recovery was just the beginning. Ongoing fatigue, poor concentration, and mood changes due to lasting viral effects have affected work, relationships and quality of life.
Our team of specialist psychiatrists, clinical immunologists and laboratory scientists at the University of Cape Town set out to understand why some people continue to experience fatigue, anxiety and memory loss long after recovering from COVID-19. We wanted to know whether the body’s early immune and cardiovascular responses to the virus – that is, how the body fought the virus – could help predict who might go on to develop these persistent symptoms. They are often referred to as long COVID, or a major component of long COVID.
