While the emergency phase of the COVID pandemic has ended, now the World Health Organization (WHO) is focusing on how to transition back to normal.
Around 36 million people living in Europe and some parts of central Asia may have experienced long COVID in the three years since the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s European regional office said.
Long COVID is a post-viral condition characterised as symptoms that last after someone has recovered from a COVID-19 infection.
Symptoms of long COVID have included fatigue, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, cough, dizziness and more.
“That’s 1 in 30 who may still be finding it hard to return to normal life,” said Dr Hans Kluge, WHO’s regional director for Europe, at a press conference on Tuesday.
Early on in the pandemic, sufferers described feeling abandoned, with relapses or new symptoms after their initial COVID infections sometimes not taken seriously.
Now, there are increasing support groups and a recent study suggested that long COVID occurs in some 10 per cent of acute COVID-19 infections.
“We are listening to the calls from Long COVID patients and support groups and raising awareness of their plight, but clearly much more needs to be done to understand it,” Kluge said.
“Long COVID remains a glaring blind spot in our knowledge, that urgently needs to be filled”.
Pandemic disruptions remain in health systems
When asked by Euronews Next about the recovery of health systems and workers from the pandemic, Dr Catherine Smallwood, WHO Europe’s senior emergency officer, said there was still work to be done.
Health workers, including doctors, nurses but also people conducting public health investigations and laboratory testing, have all “suffered over the past three years and need to recover better, stronger,” she said.
The health workforce is one of thirteen elements in the organisation’s new action plan to take the lessons from COVID-19 to better prepare for future health emergencies.
WHO declared on May 5 that COVID-19 no longer constituted a global public health emergency but that it was rather an ongoing health issue.
Still, nearly 1,000 deaths occur each week due to COVID-19, which is likely an underestimate.
“One in five countries in the European region still report significant disruptions in most healthcare settings and so there’s a lot of work still to be done,” added Smallwood.
“Whilst on the day-to-day level, we tend to think COVID-19 has kind of moved on and we’re out of it, In the health facilities in our health systems, it’s very much present; it’s very much impacting our day-to-day work still and there’s work to be done,” she said.
Small resurgence of mpox
WHO experts also warned that there was a small resurgence of monkeypox (now officially called mpox) in Europe with 22 new cases in the month of May.
They urged those who are at higher risk of contracting the disease, in particular men who have sex with men, to get vaccinated.
“The clear policy response is continued investment in an elimination strategy in the European region,” said Smallwood, adding that as there is no animal host in Europe, eliminating human transmission of mpox was “quite possible”.
She added that the peak of virus cases last year was in the middle of the summer and linked in part to travel.
“What’s different this year is that the knowledge about the virus, how it spreads and how we can stop it is much more present,” she said.