Nova Scotia senator calling for more long-COVID research

从极端疲劳到大脑雾，头痛到睡眠问题，情绪变化和心脏问题，估计有10％的感染Covid-19的人在初次感染后仍在遭受数月甚至数年的痛苦。

为了提高公众对长长的认识，并敦促卫生当局制定适当的定义和适当的回应，Covid-19 Resources Canada将在本周四（6月9日）指定国家长曲意识日。

参议员斯坦·库切尔（Stan Kutcher）在接受采访时说：“知道这些东西的人开始发出警报声，当许多人最初的感染结束时，这种病毒还没有结束。”

Kutcher, a psychiatrist and Dalhousie University professor emeritus, is one of five panelists participating in a national, public虚拟长期旋转的市政厅on Thursday afternoon.

Kutcher说：“我是医生，也不是传染病专家，但与我们通常使用的许多其他病毒相比，这种病毒对这种病毒影响如此多的身体器官和身体系统的影响感到很惊讶。”

“这是一种呼吸道病毒，但其影响不仅在呼吸系统中。”

长期浮动是用来描述人们感染后经历的200多种新的，返回或正在进行的症状的广泛范围的术语。在某些情况下，以前健康的人由于症状而无法重返工作岗位，甚至无法参加日常活动。加拿大政府称其为COVID-19条状况。一些患者称自己为冠状病毒病long-haulers。

库彻（Kutcher）在二月份感染了该病毒，并说他经历了“实质性”一周的“可怕疲劳”，并令人头疼，这是他从未有过的。

四个月后，他偶尔仍然会出现短暂的严重疲劳或“可怕”的头痛，持续两个小时。

“I have to basically sit down and close my eyes and then it goes away,” he said.

“这种症状持续存在的非常温和的经历，有些人在各种不同的症状中都有它。”

‘吐在水桶中实际需要的东西”

Kutcher said there are many unanswered questions, and investing in targeted long-COVID research is critical. We don’t yet know the full range of long-COVID symptoms, how debilitating they are, how long they persist, or what impact they have on people’s ability to continue working and caring for themselves and their families.

“然后我们对各种器官产生影响。大脑，心脏，心血管。可能是有孩子的肝脏，我们仍然不确定那个。”库彻说。

“If we just look at the brain, which is an area that I know a little bit more than I know some of the others, there’s potential for early dementing illnesses, potential for various neuropsychiatric illnesses.”

库切尔说，由于长期兴奋的患者的涌入可能会对医疗保健系统产生重大影响，因此现在需要进行大量研究投资。

While the federal government provided $20 million over five years in Budget 2022 for Canadian Institutes of Health Research on the long-term effects of COVID-19 infections, that funding is also allotted to investigating “the wider impacts of COVID-19” on health and health care systems.

“这是实际需要的水桶中的吐口水。我们确实需要通过加拿大卫生研究所以及其他机构进行一些认真的投资，以真正促进和加强这项（长期）研究。”

“But we also then need to figure out how to take that research into action. What are we going to have to do in our health care system to deal with what we’re finding?”

库切尔还认为，加拿大需要发起对话，并与在长期发展领域具有研究能力的其他国家进行安排。这包括美国国立卫生研究院和英国医学研究委员会。

他说：“他们拥有的资源比我们拥有的更多，但我们没有优势，因此我希望看到加拿大可以发挥重要作用的国际财团的一些发展。”

‘I have seen divorce, I have seen separations’

心脏病专家兼麦吉尔大学教授兼研究员Thao Huynh博士也参加了周四的国家虚拟市政厅。她还完成了公共卫生和流行病学的博士研究。

“We are currently conducting a study of our (Québec long-COVID) patients with cardiovascular symptoms. So chest pain, palpitations, dizziness,” Huynh said in an interview.

“我们发现至少10%的这些人哈ve inflammation of the heart on an MRI. This is not small, and it says there are a lot of people out there who do have disease ongoing of their heart two years after their COVID infection.”

在2020年初，在长期发展成为一个知名实体之前，Hyunh和她的研究团队对感染了Covid-19的人进行了后续研究。

此研究已成为一项护理计划，Huynh说没有获得任何政府资金。由于她的许多患者没有初级保健提供者，因此她最终监督了他们及其复杂需求，超出了与心脏有关的需求。

一些患者旅行至12个小时去见她。

“For me it’s very hard to (have) a 20-year-old lady now in a wheelchair and I cannot tell her when it will end. Will she be afflicted for life? Will she be able to have a family? Have a child? That for me is heartbreaking,” Huynh said.

“尽管进行了一些研究，但这还不够。我治疗心脏病，我可以准确地告诉患者会发生什么。但是，我无法长期使用，我无法获得他们所需的帮助。”

Huynh said the pandemic isn’t yet over and we’re facing a second pandemic brought about by long-COVID. She’s frustrated that more isn’t being done.

“Long-COVID is just not physical; there’s mental distress also. Patients who were very healthy and active before cannot go back to work, their quality of life is miserable,” Huynh said.

“这些患者通常是年轻的女性，有年幼的孩子，他们突然无法工作并且无法享受生活，因此他们的配偶必须这样做。这给家庭带来了很大的压力。我看过离婚，我已经看到了分离。”

‘我们落后了’

Huynh said in the pandemic’s first wave, between 20% and 25% of those infected were afflicted with long-COVID symptoms. Her research suggests the numbers of people with long-COVID dropped to about 10% after vaccination roll-outs, which is why she constantly pushes the message that vaccination helps reduce infection severity and duration.

Huynh说：“现在，加拿大有数百万人感染了Covid，因此有很多人患有长期疲软的症状。”

“Science has not been able to find a cure, and also there are still a lot of myths and lack of knowledge that physicians and other health care providers have.”

她认为，像库彻（Kutcher）一样，迫切需要专门针对长期专门专门专门针对长期兴奋的研究资金，这是全国性的长期专家合作小组的创建。此外，她说，加拿大必须像在英国和许多斯堪的纳维亚国家一样建立一个长长的注册表。

“我们落后了。特鲁多政府一直在投资如何治疗急性共同的情况下非常积极主动，但以某种方式他们完全忽略了长期兴奋的事物。”她说。

“我希望人们认识到这是一种真正的疾病，它不仅是心身，而且他们对患者的尊重，同理心和帮助对待患者。”

巨大的危机不断建立

For patients struggling with long-COVID, Thursday’s national day of awareness is an opportunity to share with Canadians a key repercussion of the pandemic.

“当您谈论的是Covid时，应该在谈话中长长的话题，”安大略省奥克维尔。居民苏西·古尔丁（Susie Goulding）在接受采访中说。

The online加拿大共同的长途旅行者支持团体高尔丁2020年开始增加to more than 16,900 members and continues to grow daily. She said there has been a “huge rise” in the number of Atlantic Canadians joining the group in the last two months.

“It’s still catching people by surprise, it’s still not well known, the message hasn’t been broadly spread. We’re hoping this (day) helps create more awareness of what can happen should you contract the virus,” Goulding said.

“It’s not just about deaths and recoveries. Long-COVID is an issue, a mass disabling event, but we’re still having people come to the group that have GPs (general practitioners) that have never heard of long-COVID. Two and a half years into the pandemic, this is a huge problem.”

古尔丁还希望看到对长期研究，国家长途登记册的大量投资，以及对全国各地协调跨学科康复诊所的危机反应，以帮助长期兴奋的患者。

“我们需要更好地了解从定义方面的长期变形，以及我们需要采取的措施来涵盖现在即将到来的这场巨大的危机，而这正在不断建立。”

虽然大多数与长期挣扎的人往往是30至64岁之间的女性，但古尔丁说，她的小组的会员资格从婴儿和幼儿到老年人。

“Certainly it does affect children and people of all ages. We have quite a few teenagers in our group and many young people in their twenties who are completely incapacitated,” Goulding said.

“人们处理诸如盆栽（姿势心动过速综合症 - 坐着或站立后心率异常增加）等问题的人被卧床不起，我们小组中有几个人在谈论结束他们的生命等。”

Goulding hopes the national day of awareness reaches not only long-COVID caregivers, families, and medical practitioners, but policy makers and average Canadians.

“我们希望看到更多的研究是为此致力于这一的，并弄清了长长的基本机制。科学确实落后了。”古尔丁说。

“Now, our science needs to catch up with the growing crisis at hand.”

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