Post COVID/Long COVID (last updated 20 January 2021)

Summary

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, initial descriptions of the symptomology focused on the clinical presentations of patients in the acute, inpatient setting. In the months since, information on how patients with mild disease present has become available along with information on the fairly common occurrence of asymptomatic disease.

More recently, data have emerged that some patients continue to experience symptoms related to COVID-19 after the acute phase of infection. There is currently no clearly delineated consensus definition for the condition: terminology has included “long COVID,” “post-COVID syndrome” and “post-acute COVID-19 syndrome". Among the lay public, the phrase “long haulers” is also being used. Here the COVID-19 Real-Time Learning Network review the current literature on post-acute symptoms in patients with COVID-19, using the term “post-acute COVID-19 syndrome".