The effects of the Coronavirus can sometimes last for months
Translated by Thomas Ansell
As the number of hospital admissions caused by the Coronavirus outbreak continues to grow, more focus is being put on the long-term effects of the disease. In the Leeuwarder MCL Hospital, a new ‘post-Corona clinic’ is hard at work helping people with their ongoing issues; some of whom suffered from the virus months ago. As reported by the Omrop Fryslân.
Physiotherapist Erwin Koster is one of those working in the new clinic, and is working with patients including Stefan: a fit man between thirty and fourty. This time last year he could lift weights easily, but he now needs to bring his stamina back up due to his Coronavirus experiences. Stefan is one of about fifty patients being helped at the new policlinic.
Aly Ybema became ill with the Coronavirus in March, and has just ended the MCL’s post-disease trajectory. “I’ve wasn’t so sick. Head-pain, two breathless nights and coughing. That was about it. Afterwards you don’t know anything, you just hope that you’ll feel better. But I was really tired, mostly in my legs, I began to get heart palpitations and head pain again.”
Ybema came to the clinic through her GP, who sent her via a specialist lung-doctor called Jolanda Kuijenhoven: “we have in this clinic a group of people that came through the Coronavirus through home isolation. They were sick, but now they have a number of symptoms that have stayed with them”, she says.
The MCL’s new facility trains people to get over these longer-term symptoms, and the first group of six ex-patients have just ‘graduated’. Kuijenhoven says: “it’s actually going well with these people. They are about 95 percent back to normal. They are back a work and are re-picking up their social lives, but their lung function just isn’t the same as it was.”
