In late 2021, The Sopris Sun published a story on a medical condition that had arisen during the COVID pandemic and had only been identified a short time earlier. Formally called post-acute sequelae of SARS CoV-2 (PASC) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is now commonly known as Long COVID.
The CDC states, “Long COVID is a wide range of new, returning, or ongoing health problems that people experience after being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. Most people with COVID-19 get better within a few days to a few weeks after infection, so at least four weeks after infection is the start of when Long COVID could first be identified.” And, they note, “Anyone who was infected can experience Long COVID.”
As discussed in the 2021 article, symptoms of Long COVID vary widely, from mild to severe. Some of the most common reported are shortness of breath, chest pain, heart palpitations, fatigue, continued loss of smell and “brain fog” (i.e., confusion and problems with concentration and memory). In addition, organs (e.g., the lungs, heart and kidneys) can become damaged and lead to serious conditions such as diabetes or heart problems. Long COVID symptoms can last weeks, months or even years.
Long COVID in the Valley
Back in early 2021, the Lung Center at Valley View Hospital set up a once-monthly Long COVID clinic to handle what Jenny Queen, a physician’s assistant at the center, told The Sun was “the big spike in cases” that winter. She continued, “We had a very busy 2021,” anticipating that 2022 would be as well.
However, that turned out not to be the case. Flash forward to April 2024, when Queen told The Sun that the clinic had closed down “sometime in 2022,” because “there were just not that many referrals at that point.”
She continued, “When we started [in 2021], we were getting four to eight referrals a month, and then it tapered off with the development of vaccines and then the [appearance of the] Omicron [virus] strain. Vaccines came out, and people were not getting the same severity of illness. Overall, with Omicron, we had a decreased number of patients who got Long COVID. It still happens but at much less frequency; we handle about one referral every other month.”
The situation out West
While such low incidences of Long COVID may be common in our neck of the woods, that is not the case out in far-western Colorado, especially Mesa County, where hundreds of Long COVID patients have been reported since the start of the pandemic.
The focus of treatment there is the Post-COVID Recovery clinic at Family Health West (FHW), a 25-bed critical-access hospital in Fruita. The clinic was set up in late 2020 by Dr. Ellen Price, DO, a specialist in physical and rehabilitative medicine, and by others, who saw the need for specialized care addressing lingering effects of COVID-19. It is the only facility of its kind in western Colorado, the rest being in Front Range communities, and is part of a large network of collaborative PASC/Long COVID clinics nationwide.
In a recent conversation, Dr. Price told The Sun that the clinic was set up to help St. Mary’s Hospital in nearby Grand Junction as COVID cases (and then Long COVID) spiked in Mesa County. However, FHW was also receiving patients from as far away as Crested Butte and Eagle. Even now, the clinic sees patients from a broad area of western Colorado and even Moab, Utah.
She said that about 420 patients have been treated by the clinic since its opening, “some just once or twice, some since the beginning,” for the more debilitating cases. They are still receiving an average of two to three new referrals per week. In general, they see a patient “about once every six weeks,” which becomes difficult for patients who live farther away. Telemedicine is common.
When asked, Dr. Price could not say if the vaccination rate in Mesa County (about 50%) was a factor in the higher incidence of COVID and Long COVID there. She also noted that they “don’t really know completely” why twice as many women have Long COVID compared to men. Acknowledging that Long COVID likely is here to stay, though, she added, “People have learned to live with it.”
Additional information can be found at www.bit.ly/CDCpost-COVID and www.bit.ly/COLongCOVID