A new website aims to assist people experiencing long COVID with support services, including helping them convey their symptoms and concerns with clinicians and family members.
The online tool is meant to help people with COVID overcome some of the stigma around communicating about the disease. The website can help older adults, whether they’re living at home or in a long-term care setting, have a meaningful dialogue with caregivers, which in turn could point the way toward better treatment options.
The website, long-covid-care.org.uk, was created primarily for people with long COVID who aren’t receiving any care at all, the researchers said.
The number of individuals affected by long-term COVID symptoms is severe enough that March 15 was designated in 2023 as “Long COVID Awareness Day.”
COVID has continued to have a devastating effect on older adults, especially. Long-term COVID symptoms, which could last for years, now also are linked to several cognitive concerns and memory problems in older adults.
Among seniors who had COVID, somewhere between 25% to 33% of them end up developing at least one long-term symptom, according to the National Institute on Aging.
One way the new website can particularly benefit older adults is by helping them find mental health support services to address some of the emotional impacts from long COVID: Despite there being a mental health crisis among long-term care residents, older adults remain less likely to seek mental health services, even via telehealth.
“We hope the tool can help prevent people who might be struggling with long COVID symptoms from feeling alone,” lead researcher Nisreen Alwan, PhD, said in a statement. “Long COVID can be extremely debilitating and can be very hard to talk about.”
Many people with long COVID could be avoiding seeking help because they don’t know what is causing their symptoms or because they are concerned about discussing their symptoms among an already-overburdened care group, Alwan said.
Also on the long-COVID coping front, a new wrist-worn device in development is being designed to help sufferers pace themselves and manage symptoms, the McKnight’s Tech Daily reported last week.
