Long COVID among medical workers may have 'profound' impact on health care, study suggests

When Dr. Anne Bhéreur fell ill with COVID-19 in late 2020, she didn't anticipate just how much the infection would impact her life more than a year later.

The 46-year-old has since coped with heart inflammation, intense fatigue, and still has trouble breathing. 

Even talking is tough. While speaking slowly, often pausing for several seconds to catch her breath, Bhéreur explained how Botox injections in her vocal cord area have made it a bit easier to have a conversation — but the longer the chat, the more she struggles.

"If I push just a little, I'll be in my bed for days, not even being able to think," she said in an interview with CBC News outside her Montreal home.

That slate of debilitating symptoms means she still isn't back to work as a family and palliative care physician, leaving other health-care professionals to care for her patients.

"I know how much my colleagues are struggling and overwhelmed," she said, her voice breaking. "Everyone is exhausted."

A recent study out of Quebec suggests plenty of other health-care workers are also grappling with life-altering long COVID impacts — which could jeopardize their ability to work while putting strain on the health-care system, researchers say.

The research, which is published online but has not yet been peer-reviewed, found a high prevalence of post-COVID health issues among health-care workers who fell ill during the pandemic's first three waves.

Researchers surveyed 6,000 out of the more than 17,000 confirmed cases among health-care workers in Quebec between July 2020 and May 2021. This was done alongside a randomly selected control group of other health-care workers who had symptoms, but didn't test positive for the virus.

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The researchers found 40 per cent of those who didn't require hospitalization for their illness reported having lingering health issues after three months, along with nearly 70 per cent of those who required a hospital stay.

"With so many health-care workers infected since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing implications for quality health care delivery could be profound should cognitive dysfunction and other severe post-COVID symptoms persist in a professionally-disabling way over the longer term," the research team wrote.

Lead author Dr. Gaston De Serres, a medical epidemiologist at the Institut national de santé publique du Québec, said many of those surveyed reported cognitive issues like memory problems, trouble concentrating, or routinely misplacing essential objects required in their work or daily life. 

"And these cognitive dysfunctions for professionals working in the health-care system could be quite important to do their duties," he added.