With research showing that a significant number of patients with long Covid suffer from a form of mental illness, Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony on Tuesday assured that local authorities are equipped to deal with these matters and as such, he encouraged affected individuals to seek immediate medical attention.
During today’s update on the Covid situation in the country, Dr Anthony expressed hope that with society opening up again that affected persons will begin to feel more like themselves.
“I think at the beginning, when people were locked away because of the curfew and there was a lot of restriction of movement, I think at that point in time people found it challenging,” he noted.
“Now that the society is more opened up, I don’t think people are so confined and some of the challenges and anxieties that people might have had in the early part of the pandemic, that has eased somewhat,” the Minister added.
“We now have a better understanding of the disease and because of that better understanding, we have been able to give advice and with that advice we have been able to reduce anxiety among the population,” he further explained.
Nevertheless, the Health Minister admitted that some persons experiencing long Covid suffer from a mental illness and as such, it is important that they seek immediate medical attention.
“Some of the persons with long Covid can have symptoms of mental health issues, so we’ve seen a subset of patients who would have fatigue, who would have things like brain fog…and that’s partly due to inflammation of the brain…So, this is something that we have to pay attention to and that’s why the unit that we’ve set up to deal with long Covid will be assessing patients,” Dr Anthony noted.
“So, the bottom line here, if you have anxiety because of Covid, you can come to the hospitals for service…if it is that you’ve had Covid and your experiencing symptoms of long Covid then it is also important that you come back so that an assessment can be done,” the Minister added.
Meanwhile, even though society is more opened up, Dr Anthony stressed that Covid is still present and as such, persons still need to take precautions.
To date, 430,877 or 84 per cent of the adult population have received a first dose of a Covid vaccine while 325,696 or 63.5 per cent have received two doses.
For the 12 to 17 age cohort, 33,411 or 45.8 per cent have received a first dose of the Pfizer vaccines while 24,058 or 33 per cent have received both doses.
For booster doses, 49,068 shots have been administered.
