Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 May 14;2(5):501-504.
doi: 10.1016/j.medj.2021.03.003. Epub 2021 Mar 25.

Defining long COVID: Going back to the start

Nisreen A Alwan  1   2   3 , Luke Johnson  1
Affiliations

Defining long COVID: Going back to the start

Nisreen A Alwan et al. Med. .

Abstract

"Long COVID" is the condition whereby affected individuals do not recover for several weeks or months following the onset of symptoms suggestive of COVID-19, whether tested or not.1 The name "long COVID" was created by the people experiencing it in Spring 2020 to describe their journeys of not recovering.2 Here, we suggest a way to standardize its definition through outlining what constitutes initial infection with COVID-19.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no financial conflicts of interest. N.A.A. had/has symptoms of long COVID. In October 2020, N.A.A. provided expert feedback in relation to one scoping meeting for the NICE/SIGN/RCGP Long COVID Rapid Guideline.

References

    1. Nabavi N. Long covid: How to define it and how to manage it. BMJ. 2020;370 doi: 10.1136/bmj.m34892. m3489. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Callard F., Perego E. How and why patients made Long Covid. Soc. Sci. Med. 2021;268:113426. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chopra V., Flanders S.A., O’Malley M., Malani A.N., Prescott H.C. Sixty-Day Outcomes Among Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19. Ann. Intern. Med. 2020;11 doi: 10.7326/M20-5661. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Davis H.E., Assaf G.S., McCorkell L., Wei H., Low R.J., Re’em Y., Redfield S., Austin J.P., Akrami A. Characterizing Long COVID in an International Cohort: 7 Months of Symptoms and Their Impact. medrxiv. 2020 doi: 10.1101/2020.12.24.20248802. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Puntmann V.O., Carerj M.L., Wieters I., Fahim M., Arendt C., Hoffmann J., Shchendrygina A., Escher F., Vasa-Nicotera M., Zeiher A.M., et al. Outcomes of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Patients Recently Recovered From Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) JAMA Cardiol. 2020;5:1265–1273. - PMC - PubMed