Coronavirus vaccines reduce the risk of developing COVID-19 — but studies disagree on their protective effect against long COVID. By Heidi Ledford
Recopilado por Carlos Cabrera Lozada. Miembro Correspondiente Nacional, ANM puesto 16. ORCID: 0000-0002-3133-5183. 27/01/2022
Physiotherapist David Putrino’s neurological rehabilitation clinics used to treat about 50 people each week with conditions such as chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, and sports injuries. Then came long COVID. Now, Mount Sinai Hospital’s Abilities Research Center in New York City, one of three clinics that Putrino directs, treats another 50–100 people each week who are coping with issues such as extreme fatigue, breathlessness, difficulty concentrating, or any of the many other symptoms of long COVID —the long-lasting, poorly understood syndrome that can occur after infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. He has 1,600 clients with long COVID and more on a waiting list.
Putrino has noticed that even being fully vaccinated doesn’t necessarily protect against long COVID. Many of his clients were infected before vaccines were rolled out, and had been coping with symptoms for a year or more before they were referred to him. But he has seen about a dozen people who experienced long COVID from ‘breakthrough’ infections — in which vaccinated people catch the
coronavirus. “It is noticeably less common than in unvaccinated people, but it’s still there,” he says.