Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Physicians Continue To Dismiss Symptoms Of Those With Long Covid
The Conversation: People With Long COVID Continue To Experience Medical Gaslighting More Than 3 Years Into The Pandemic
Medical gaslighting occurs when health-care practitioners dismiss or falsely blame patients for their symptoms. While new information about long COVID has become more readily available, some patients continue to face gaslighting and feel that their symptoms are treated less seriously by some health-care professionals. (Purewal, Byers, Jamieson and Zolfaghari, 4/23)
Axios: The Ongoing Search For Long COVID Treatments
As the federal government continues to wrestle with a response to long COVID, Food and Drug Administration officials are turning to patients who've experimented with unproven treatments for clues about how to manage the condition and design clinical trials. (Moreno, 4/26)
CNET: Long COVID: What We Know Now
For many people, what started out as a relatively mild case of COVID-19 persisted into a lingering condition that took weeks or months before their suffering subsided -- some have yet to fully recover. They live with long COVID, a condition health care providers have struggled to understand and accurately diagnose since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020. Though it's hard to put a number on what percentage of people will develop long COVID, since home tests and mild cases contribute to inaccurate case counts, somewhere between 10% of people who tested positive for COVID-19 but didn't need to be hospitalized, and 50% to 70% of people who were hospitalized, developed some degree of long COVID, according to a major review of long COVID research published earlier this year in Nature Reviews Microbiology. (Rendall and Avery, 4/25)
Medscape: Extent Of Long COVID Symptoms Tied To Disease Severity
The severity of neurologic and non-neurologic symptoms associated with long COVID appear to be linked to the severity of the initial infection, new research suggests. (Yasgur, 4/24)
CIDRAP: Molnupiravir Tied To Lower Risk Of Long COVID In High-Risk Patients
Among COVID-19 patients at risk for severe illness, the use of the antiviral molnupiravir (Lagevrio) within 5 days of infection was linked to reduced odds of persistent symptoms and related hospitalization and death, regardless of vaccination status or previous infections, finds a US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) study. (Van Beusekom, 4/25)
In other pandemic news —
USA Today: COVID Pandemic: What Did US Do Wrong? New Book Examines Lessons
Despite partisan divides, pretty much everyone agrees that America's leaders made mistakes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, a group of more than 30 heavy-hitting experts from the worlds of policy, public health, science, biodefense and patient advocacy has written a book reviewing some of those errors and making suggestions for avoiding similar missteps in the future. (Weintraub, 4/25)
KFF Health News: As Federal Emergency Declaration Expires, The Picture Of The Pandemic Grows Fuzzier
Joel Wakefield isn’t just an armchair epidemiologist. His interest in tracking the spread of covid is personal. The 58-year-old lawyer who lives in Phoenix has an immunodeficiency disease that increases his risk of severe outcomes from covid-19 and other infections. He has spent lots of time since 2020 checking state, federal, and private sector covid trackers for data to inform his daily decisions. “I’m assessing ‘When am I going to see my grandkids? When am I going to let my own kids come into my house?’” he said. (Whitehead, 4/26)
KFF Health News: Listen To The Latest ‘KFF Health News Minute’
The KFF Health News Minute this week explains why some people with long covid feel swept under the rug and how a joint report with CBS News led to the criminal investigation of a dental appliance. (4/25)
