“I am concerned for people with lung covid,” says pulmonologist Merel Hellemons in Nieuws en Co. “We see that the pandemic is over in such a way that people no longer have to go to hospital to be admitted. Most people don’t, but lung covid is not over.”
Longcovid
Hellemons says that people can still contract lung covid after a new infection. “There are therefore many concerns about the current trend that testing is no longer necessary and even isolation is no longer necessary. In this way, as a vulnerable person or citizen, it is almost impossible to prevent an infection.”
“Vaccination partly protects against lung covid, by about 40 percent, but not completely. A previous infection or infections do not guarantee that you cannot still contract lung covid,” says Hellemons. “I do think that it is important to include in the discussions that are currently being held.”
Research
The future of lung covid research is also uncertain. The money is almost gone and the salaries of researchers are not properly regulated. “There are a number of projects that were started in the Netherlands in the first wave and where valuable information is still being collected about patients. That research is certainly at risk. What the Netherlands does not excel in is that little money is made available for new research into lung covid. What is the biological origin of lung covid and how can we treat it better? There is also a great loss there.”
Different symptoms
It also remains difficult to diagnose the disease in humans. No patient has the same clinical picture. “There is no test to determine it. We can only do that based on a symptom cluster,” says Hellemons. “It is also a disease where the presentation is very different in people. One person has many complaints and is seriously disabled, the other is not too bad and seems to pass over time. Within the group who have severe complaints, there are people who are particularly tired or unable to exert themselves. Others suffer a lot from shortness of breath and palpitations. It is a whole group of people who are not quite the same, which makes it difficult to see what it is mechanism. Perhaps there are several mechanisms and therefore several types of treatment are possible.”
Therapy
There are no officially approved treatments for lung covid yet. Nevertheless, treatment is offered in the Netherlands, following the Israeli example. Last year, research was started into treatment with pure oxygen. The results were cautiously positive and reason enough to also offer the treatment in the Netherlands. “What we give to recovery care and that is physiotherapy, occupational therapy. That is mainly to learn to deal with it better, and to dose better. But we are looking for a treatment that people can recover from, fully recover. These kinds of stories show see that it is apparently possible,” says Hellemons.
“I think this treatment of oxygen therapy deserves something to do further research.”