Covid's Long Shadow

For Natasha Sharma, homemaker and mother to four-year-old twins, 2022 began inauspiciously. The 34-year-old Pune resident tested positive for the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in the first week of January. For two days, Sharma had a consistently high fever and a sore throat. Following her doctor’s advice, she treated her symptoms with paracetamol and multivitamins. By day three, her fever had gone and her throat began to improve. But over the next 10 days, Sharma continued to experience weakness, aches in her leg muscles, insomnia and tiredness. Her doctor diagnosed her with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, a complex, multisystem disorder, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

- Sonali Acharjee

“It felt like there was no strength in my fingers. Just getting myself up and off the bed was a task. It was hard to look after my children or even myself,” says Sharma, a regular jogger and practitioner of yoga. Around two weeks after her Covid symptoms had eased, Sharma says she was finally able to take a flight of stairs without feeling winded.

THE WEARYING VIRUS

While fatigue has been a common symptom of Covid, Omicron has seen a rise in instances of CFS even among mild cases. The ZOE Symptom Tracking Study showed that between December 3 and 10, the most common signs of Omicron were a runny nose, headache, fatigue, sneezing and a sore throat. Similarly, the US health agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports fatigue as one of the four most common symptoms of the new variant. Early reports from South Africa also indicated that many mild cases of Omicron resulted in severe fatigue even after other symptoms receded. “Different people have different severity of Covid-19. What we are seeing is that regardless of severity, some patients are reporting weakness post recovery,” says Dr Chandrashekhar T., director, critical care, Fortis Hiranandani Hospital, Mumbai.

CFS, though, is not surprising postCovid as the body expends significant energy and resources in defending the cells from the viral infection. Doctors say such fatigue is common during the recovery period of many illnesses— malaria, typhoid, dengue and influenza, among others. “The body needs time to recover and in the initial days after symptoms subside, there will be some signs of weakness,” says Dr Vivek Nangia, pulmonologist at Max Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, New Delhi.