Long COVID patients desperate for answers, relief

the national COVID emergency declaration officially ends tomorrow, but some people who contracted the virus are still suffering years later. As CBS 2 Cindy Shoe tells us, people with long COVID are desperate for answers and relief. People look at you and they're like, oh, you look fine, you know, and it's going to be okay. And I'm going, well, it's been three years and I still have it. Darlene Tejero-Dahl is talking about long COVID, the post-virus condition that can present with any combination of more than a dozen symptoms that appear after the patient tests negative. They can last from a few weeks to a few years. My heart shooting up to 130, dizziness, shortness of breath, hair falling out, rashes.

Tejero-Dahl, who is an actress, says she's also experiencing brain fog, which we saw firsthand. What was I, I just forgot what I was saying. I think the patients that we're seeing in the patients we're trying to help are those patients who are having persistent symptoms affecting their function, their quality of life. Dr. Jonathan Shemash is the medical director for the post-Covid Recovery Center at Hackensack University Medical Center and is treating Tejero-Dahl. How you been feeling? We're just trying to help them A, with their symptoms and B, cope with the loss of their lives as they knew it. He says there are no symptoms in area, unfortunately, with limited data.

But Dr. Shemash says there is experimentation with several different medications, such as histamines, omega-3 fatty acids, naltrexone, which has been used to manage substance abuse, and guanfacine used to treat ADHD. He adds more studies are needed, and there are many who are said to be suffering with one report that states nearly one in five adults who have had COVID-19 still have long been suffering with COVID-19. For support, nearly 200,000 long haulers have turned to the Facebook group, Survivor Corps. Diana Guetta, who had one of the first confirmed cases of COVID, is the group's founder. I started Survivor Corps a way of mobilizing a movement where survivors like me could volunteer for scientific trials. It's been an important place for members to find emotional support and a vital hub for new information.

We need the NIH to help us find a way to help us find a way to help survivors who have been suffering with COVID-19. We're not doing clinical trials on those treatments starting yesterday. For now, though, Tejero Dahl says she deals with long COVID with little medical intervention. It's just so hard to deal with all the time. It's such a lonely place to be in because no one wants to hear about it anymore. Everyone's over, done it.

CBS2 News At 11, COVID-19, Coronavirus, Long COVID