The three main symptoms of “new crown”: are fatigue, brain fog and muscle pain, the specific manifestations vary from person to person. Other more common persistent symptoms include shortness of breath, chills, body aches, headache, joint pain, chest pain, cough, and persistent loss of taste or smell.

 Forgetfulness, anxiety: “I feel useless”

Many people with long-term symptoms report cognitive impairment or memory loss that affects their ability to make everyday decisions, speak, follow directions and drive, and impair their quality of life.

Xiao Liu (pseudonym) works in British media. Three years ago, he suffered from depression. He largely recovered before contracting Covid-19 in November 2021 and has stopped taking antidepressants. But after she contracted Covid-19, the depression returned. The doctor assessed and judged that one of the symptoms of the new crown-brain fog persisted.

“After I got the new crown, I felt that I was ‘brainless’, I didn’t want to do anything, and I was extremely anxious.”

It starts with cold-like symptoms, headache, cough, fever, and loss of taste and smell. There are also chest tightness, shortness of breath, fatigue, insomnia, loss of appetite, forgetfulness, inability to concentrate, unresponsiveness, anxiety, etc.

“The overall condition is not good, and the weight has lost four kilograms”

After Xiao Liu fell ill, the children became sensible. I get up every morning looking for a school uniform to wear, and my 11-year-old will scramble eggs, eat breakfast, and go to school alone. My brother was hungry at night, so he cooked instant noodles and ate them together.

Xiao Liu remembers coughing for three weeks, being bedridden for a month, and then taking a long sick leave of more than three months.

“I couldn’t get out of bed to cook at all. The children ate takeaways every day, and my mouth ulcers had developed for a long time. Fortunately, some friends helped us and often brought us home-cooked food. At that time, the volunteers in the community even gave me anti-inflammatory drugs. Depression. Come to my house and make sure I take it on time. My family doctor advised me to call my psychiatrist again.”

“The biggest motivator for me was the several home visits from the social worker in charge of child welfare. The kind help made me extremely anxious and insomniac, and I felt like an incompetent mother who couldn’t do even the most basic things to take care of her children.” Covid has cost me! It’s unacceptable to me.”

“Regular doctor consultations and cordial greetings from unit leaders also made me feel like I was a burden. I didn’t want to be sick all the time. Everyday burnout and bedridden made me feel like I was useless.” “

For a long time, Xiao Liu felt that he had Alzheimer’s disease. Can’t remember anything, looking for something every day. It takes a few repetitions to understand what the doctor says. Sometimes after calling in the morning to confirm, call in the afternoon to ask.

“Sometimes I don’t know if I have taken medicine or not. Once I enter the kitchen, I forget what I am doing. I look at the pills with a water glass and ask myself if I just took the medicine or not?”

Because of the confusion caused by many small things, Xiao Liu deeply doubts his ability to do things. She feels that she must first learn to forgive herself and accept herself who is often tired and forgetful now.

Xiao Liu said that now he wants to make himself happier and more optimistic by doing one small thing every day. Doctors want to taper off antidepressants over a year.

Fatigue: “Three hours of sleep when I get back from the store”

Severe fatigue is by far the most common symptom of COVID-19. Other symptoms include muscle pain, hearing and vision problems, headaches, loss of taste and smell, damage to the heart, lungs, kidneys, and intestines, diarrhea, and mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and distraction, and stupor.

Before being diagnosed with “coronavirus”, she had been suffering from persistent fatigue, fever, and loss of smell and taste for months, for which she consulted several doctors of different specialties.

At first, my temperature rose slightly, I felt dizzy, and then my throat started to hurt. A day later, my fever reached 38.5°C. 

Later, I went for a checkup and received treatment. 

After three weeks of conventional viral infection treatment, tachycardia was found, while fatigue symptoms did not decrease.

Frequent blood tests, blood pressure measurements, and lung monitoring are performed. After taking antibiotics and vitamins for three weeks, the treatment failed, and he underwent ENT, pulmonology, cardiology, virology, rheumatology and immunology tests. Found chronic sinusitis, and heart adhesion, but not sure if it is caused by the new crown, it was still there before.

After a month, blood cell counts stabilized, but mental and physical fatigue and fever persisted.

For seven months, I was unable to concentrate, disoriented, felt hot, shivering, tired, didn’t know when it was going to pass, and felt scared every day.

At the doctor’s advice, make a “resurrection” plan, start walking, but take breaks from time to time, sleep at least three hours after going to the store or spend an hour in front of the computer.

The child is doing nucleic acid nasopharyngeal testing

 Cognitive Function and Brain Fog: “IQ Decreases…”

“I’m not back to normal, from a cognitive standpoint, I’m not back to where I was before the coronavirus, in terms of focus, agility, flexibility… a year and a half later, I feel like I’ve only lost 30-40 %”. she says. % has been restored. I’m not the same as before, my IQ has dropped. “

“After a year and a half, after a lot of hard work, a lot of self-discipline, and all things considered, my condition has improved. I have anxiety (cognition) and I won’t fully recover, but I’m slowly accepting the possibility.”