by Paula Spann, SUNY Downstate School of Masters in Public Health Candidate, 2024
COVID-19 did a whammy on the world. There is a saying that New York is the city that never sleeps; well, it slept during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and part of 2021. In this article, I would like to tackle the symptoms of long COVID because it is not talked about enough, and I want people to be aware of how comorbidities contribute to the effects of long COVID.
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Long COVID is a severe outcome of COVID-19 infection with long-term effects. Long COVID is defined as signs, symptoms, and conditions that continue or develop after the initial COVID-19 infection.
I am passionate about this topic because I am from the Caribbean and live in East Flatbush, fondly called “Little Caribbean,” which boasts of Afro-Caribbean immigrants from Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, Jamaica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Panama, and other island nations. I wanted to tackle this issue because COVID-19 wreaked havoc on people with prior comorbidities. According to NYC Community Health Profiles, the obesity rate in East Flatbush is 34% higher than the rest of NYC, 18% have been diagnosed with diabetes, and 32% have hypertension.
There is a lack of public awareness of long COVID, and I want the Caribbean community to know of this issue. Since COVID-19 is not as prevalent as it used to be, the long-term effects are not an immediate health issue. Progress has been excruciatingly slow, and because of this it has not been taken seriously.
In East Flatbush, 17% of adults are uninsured, 8% have gone without medical care in the past 12 months, and the rate of avoidable hospitalizations among adults is 1,396 per 100,000. “Avoidable hospitalizations” are hospital visits that could be prevented if adults had access to quality primary care. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that long COVID is a physiological condition affecting the body systems and can cause lung, heart, and kidney damage.
People living with long COVID have reported symptoms such as shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, heart palpitations, chest pain, and cough, to name a few. I had brunch about a month ago with one of my friends, and she said that since she had COVID-19, she noticed an on-and-off cough, to which I responded that I had another friend who complained about the same symptom.
Long COVID is problematic for the Caribbean community. As noted in NYC Community Health Profiles, their obesity rate is higher than the rest of NYC. Obesity is a chronic health condition that raises the risk for heart disease – the leading cause of death in the United States and is linked to many other health problems, including Type 2 diabetes and cancer.
Some Caribbean people do not have the time to go to the doctor when they become sick. They must work two or more jobs to make ends meet, and it comes down to going to the doctor or working to pay rent and buying food, most times, the latter wins. Frankly, some do not take their illness seriously – growing up in the Caribbean and even here in the U.S., every time I do not feel well, my mom tells me to drink ginger or orange-peel tea because it is gas, every ailment is chucked up to it being gas. This shows that they would rather avoid going to the doctor than finding out what the true ailment is.
Since the Caribbean community is already at high risk of obesity and hypertension, healthcare should be easily accessible. If they seek medical care, they should not be afraid that they will not get the proper care they deserve because of not having money to pay. They also give incorrect information for fear of getting a high bill they cannot afford because they are uninsured. They may also experience healthcare bias and not seek medical attention because of the fear of being mistreated or disrespected. I think one of the solutions should be free mobile clinics stationed in key locations in the neighborhood to make it easily accessible for them to get to.
Even though there is ongoing research, we need to raise community awareness around long COVID since there is a lack of resources available at this time. Prevention is the best way to avoid getting long COVID, but how can you stop someone from getting it?
On August 3, in a NBC News clip they that New York state is reporting an uptick in COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions as of late. The state’s Department of Health released a report stating that hospital admissions increased 22% week over week, averaging more than 100 admissions per day.
