HUNTER residents with symptoms of "long COVID" may soon have a care alternative outside of Sydney as NSW Health endeavours to roll out more clinics across the state.
The NSW government recently announced $19 million in the 2022/23 budget to establish "several" new post-COVID clinics for NSW residents experiencing lingering symptoms more than 12 weeks after infection.
The multidisciplinary clinics will be established across the state from early next year. The locations of these clinics are yet to be decided, but Hunter clinicians are already receiving referrals as more patients start seeking help.
University of Newcastle Conjoint Professor Peter Wark, a specialist in respiratory and sleep medicine, confirmed many Hunter residents who had been trying to get into the clinic at St Vincent's Hospital were being referred back to the regions because it was "really full".
"Newcastle is a major centre, so it will almost certainly need something on site here," he said. "We then need some sort of a process whereby we can support people who do live more distantly and outside of capital cities as well.
"With our current caseload of acute disease, I'd say it will be an ongoing problem... There's a lot of debate about what the true prevalence of long COVID is going to be, but it probably sits in the order of about 5 per cent who will have enough of a problem that they'll need to be managed with some input from specialist services."
He said the problem has emerged since December and January, when COVID-19 case numbers exploded in the Hunter.
"Since then, we've had 7 million Australians become infected with COVID-19 - and that's a lot of people in a very short period of time," he said. "So we are going to see long COVID emerging really in that cohort. That's a problem which is going to be before us in the very near future. So these clinics are too late. But we do need to get started with an approach."
There are no definitive tests for long COVID, which affects the brain, heart, lungs, pancreas, and other organs.
Professor Wark said there were a lot of respiratory viruses circulating in the community at present, including COVID-19 and influenza, and that was being felt in Hunter hospitals.
"Everything is showing that we're probably going to embark upon another rise of cases with COVID with the BA.5 variant now becoming more dominant," he said.
"So I think the strain and the issues for the health service are going to continue throughout this winter without too much interruption, unfortunately."
Wearing a mask and minimising the spread was perhaps the only "realistic" thing we could do to mitigate the impact of the respiratory viruses circulating. Vaccination delivered a substantial decrease in the risk of developing long COVID, of which the common symptoms include weakness, brain fog, fatigue, headache, hair loss, shortness of breath and cough.
But Professor Wark warned that the emerging COVID-19 variants had a lot of "immune escape", which was a problem in NSW given just 65 per cent of eligible people had received the recommended three doses of the vaccine.
"Your two vaccine doses are really not going to be enough protection," he said.
"So if you haven't had your third dose, you really should.
"People who are eligible for four should also get that fourth dose as well."
The long COVID clinics proposed by NSW Health will help those suffering from post-COVID - where people have symptoms linked to severe infection and need additional support; and "post-acute" or long COVID, for people with symptoms more than three months after infection that cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis. NSW Health said given many of the symptoms can also be linked to other serious diseases and illnesses, it was important people experiencing significant lingering effects of a COVID-19 infection followed up with their GP to get the correct diagnosis and treatment.
