Researchers have created a new app called the COVID Symptom Study that looks to help experts study the long-term impact of COVID-19.
What is the new COVID-19 app?
A group of researchers created the new COVID Symptom Study app at the beginning of the pandemic so people can track their symptoms day by day, according to WFTS Tampa Bay.
- “This COVID Symptoms Study app does allow people to basically input on a regular basis what symptoms you’re experiencing, so this has allowed us to understand what proportion of people are really starting to report these long-term symptoms that we think are Long COVID,” said Dr. Andrew Chan, professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, according to WFTS Tampa Bay.
Chan said the app can help researchers answer more questions about COVID-19.
- “We really want people to volunteer their information because that is what really gives us the ability to answer some of these critical questions about disease that we don’t understand that well,” said Chan, per WFTS Tampa Bay.
What does the COVID-19 symptom app do?
NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said the app can actually predict whether or not someone will suffer from COVID-19 symptoms for the long term.
- “These findings come as yet another important reminder of the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public health,” Collins said in a blog post. “This includes not only people who are hospitalized with severe COVID-19 but, all too often, those who get through the initial period of infection relatively unscathed.”
Long-COVID-19 remains a major issue
Patients with “long-COVID” face long-term symptoms of the novel coronavirus, including brain fog, headaches, numbness, tingling, loss or altered taste, loss of smell, dizziness, pain and blurred vision on a consistent basis, as I wrote for the Deseret News.
Some patients reported neurological symptoms, too. Dr. Igor J. Koralnik, Northwestern Medicine’s chief of neuroinfectious diseases and global neurology, told The New York Times that “long-COVID” symptoms can come out of nowhere.