• Recognition

• Research

• Rehabilitation

for Covid Long-Haulers

www.covidlonghaulcanada.com

Long covid has affected tens of thousands of Canadians with new cases daily. These long-term effects are costing Canadians their livelihoods, health, and abilities to function on a daily basis. The government has been strategically implementing safety nets to protect its citizens against the many ripple effects of covid-19, and yet long-haulers are slipping through the cracks. They are too sick to look for work, which is required to collect CRB, and unable to access healthcare and rehabilitation, leaving them vulnerable to falling into a downward spiral of unrecoverable health and economic disaster.

Long covid needs to be recognized as a syndrome, given a name, and taken seriously by doctors. It must be counted in Health Canada's daily statistic counts and the definition of recovered cases must be changed to non infectious. We are not in fact recovered and 80% of people will have lingering symptoms for weeks and months after the 2 week period mandated by Health Canada. We need to be to be symptomatically and clinically diagnosed by our medical practitioners as many of us in the first wave were denied testing or tested too late to get a positive result. Without that golden ticket we are scrutinized, denied medical help, and blocked from access into research initiatives and rehabilitation.

The government must swiftly fund robust interdisciplinary, targeted research of long-haulers. This a serious issue that needs to be studied diligently and inclusively for all the affected population, not just the small percentage of positive PCR and antibody tested community. The underlying mechanism of long covid needs to be discovered quickly.

A network of inclusive rehabilitation, dedicated explicitly to recovery needs to be put in place. These clinics must be accessible to everyone suffering from long covid and clinically diagnosed people must not be discluded. People are going to need physical, cognitive, psychological, and financial integrated care centres to be able to get back to work and to a meaningful life. Without help, long-haulers are likely to become chronic, causing a huge societal economic crisis for Canada. However, with swift intervention and implementation of a network designed to recognize, research, and rehabilitate long-haulers, we may be able to manage the unavoidable tsunami that is about to hit.

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