Anthony Fauci urges US to 'not be complacent' in fight against long Covid

The COVID-19 pandemic is currently under control in the United States but Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, has urged the government to not be “complacent”.

Fauci has been a central figure for the US in the fight against the COVID-19 infection and he believes that it is too early to announce victory over the pandemic. In a recent interview, he warned against the impact of long Covid and requested the authorities to continue the research on the topic.

“It’s a very insidious beneath-the-radar-screen public health emergency because it isn’t that you have people who are hospitalized or dying but their function is being considerably impaired and, for reasons that are obvious, that doesn’t attract as much attention as a death rate,” he told The Guardian.

“When you say right now in the United States 400 people a day die from Covid – several months ago that number was 3,000 to 4,000 – that’s a number that catches your attention and it’s very real and very acute. But to say that 7 million to 20 million people are really tired after Covid, people say, well, what does that mean? It’s not very concrete. And yet for the individual patient, it could be debilitating.”

According to the data provided by the WorldHealthOrganisation, around 7.5 million to 23 million individuals in the US have shown symptoms of long Covid. While no concrete test exists in order to detect long Covid, Fauci said that it is important to keep investing in developing a proper system.

“When you look at the sheer numbers of people in the country and the world who’ve been infected, even those who’ve been vaccinated, even if a very small percentage of them have significant symptoms both from the standpoint of severity and duration, that’s a real problem,” he concluded.