Dr. Fauci's Sure Signs You Have Long-Lasting COVID

With all the talk about coronavirus cases and deaths, one number not counted are the "long-haulers." "There is a syndrome that has a name that I'm going to try and see if we can get the medical community to change because it doesn't sound right. It's called long haulers and long haulers are people who get infected, who clear the virus, logically, yet they were either mildly or moderately symptomatic," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and member of the Coronavirus Task Force, said at yesterday's American University's "The Kennedy Political Union Presents, Dr. Anthony Fauci" seminar.

"They may or may not have to have been in the hospital, but when their virus is cleared, they go for weeks, if not months—and we might not even know how long, because we're only eight months into it—but they go for several weeks or even a few months with a constellation of symptoms that are consistent in this group of individuals." Read on to see if you have the symptoms, and to get through this pandemic at your healthiest, don't miss these Sure Signs You've Already Had Coronavirus.

1

Shortness of Breath

"It's shortness of breath, even though they don't have any pneumonia, they just—'I can't walk up the stairs in my house. Even though I used to run up the stairs,'" says Dr. Fauci.

2

Dysautonomia

Young man suffering from cold at his home
Young man suffering from cold at his home

This is "where our body temperature feels like it's not…you're very cold in a room where you're very hot in a room," says Fauci. "Your autonomic nervous system is out of whack."

3

Brain Fog

woman with headache holds hand to her temple making a painful expression
woman with headache holds hand to her temple making a painful expression

"Again, another bad word for a medical terminology, but what they report is that they can't concentrate. And as much as they try, they get in front of a computer when they can't concentrate."

RELATED: Signs COVID-19 is in Your Brain

4

Common COVID Symptoms Can be Long Lasting, Also

"Cough, fatigue, muscle ache, fever," can all last for months and months—maybe longer, we'll see, says Fauci. Fatigue, in particular, can be long lasting and resemble Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, accompanied by pain, headaches and myalgia.

RELATED: 11 Symptoms of COVID You Never Want to Get

5

This is Not All in the Mind

woman hold head in hands suffer from grief problem, depressed lonely upset african girl crying alone on sofa at home
woman hold head in hands suffer from grief problem, depressed lonely upset african girl crying alone on sofa at home

"The trouble with that is when people say that people say, well, this is neurosis, it's psychiatric," says Fauci. "But then all of a sudden, when you get scores and scores and scores of people who start complaining to their physicians, you got to take it seriously. So in that regard, we're doing a big study to look at post COVID, recovered people to find out just what the incidence, the prevalence, and just what the pathophysiological mechanisms are. But it's a real phenomenon. It's not people that are a little, you know, neurotic. It's a real phenomenon." As for yourself, to get through this pandemic at your healthiest, stay outdoors more than indoors when with people you're not sheltering with, wear your face mask, social distance, and don't miss these 35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID.