LONG COVID, LONG WAIT

IN MARCH 2020, LAURA FITTON, A 50-YEAR-OLD ENTREPRENEUR in Massachusetts, had a high fever, sore throat, gastrointestinal issues, and loss of taste. But at the time, few of those symptoms were linked to COVID-19, so Fitton wasn’t eligible for a test. It took seven more months of persistent symptoms—including brain fog, swollen joints, fast heart rate, chills, and fatigue—for a doctor to order an antibody test. Although the test came back negative—perhaps because of how much time had passed since she had gotten sick—Fitton was relieved that a doctor was finally exploring the possibility of Long COVID, a little-understood condition in which people suffer symptoms long after their acute infection passes.

Two years after her initial illness, getting care is still a battle. She must wait until July for a simple screening call with a Long COVID clinic in Boston, and until this October for a neurologist to walk through the results of tests he ran on her in November 2021. In the meantime, she’s mostly on her own to manage her symptoms, which are still present but have improved significantly since she got vaccinated last year. “I can’t imagine what this is like for somebody who’s in the condition I was in,” she says, “and is just getting stonewalled everywhere.”

So many people are suffering from Long COVID