Long COVID is a term that describes the constellation of long-term health effects caused by infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These range from persistent respiratory symptoms, such as shortness of breath, to debilitating fatigue or brain fog that limits people’s ability to work, and conditions such as heart failure and diabetes, which are known to last a lifetime. New research and reports conclude that long COVID is a complex chronic condition that can result in more than 200 health effects across multiple body systems. Physician scientist, subject matter expert and author Ziyad Al-Aly helps us understand the science and the real world implications of suffering from Long Covid.

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The cold and flu season of 2023 has begun with a vengeance. Viruses that have been unusually scarce over the past three years are reappearing at remarkably high levels, sparking a “tripledemic” of COVID-19, the flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. This November’s national hospitalization levels for influenza were the highest in 10 years. Emily Toth Martin and Marisa Eisenberg are infectious disease epidemiologists and researchers, and have spent our careers focused on understanding how viruses spread and how best to stop them. To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, public health colleagues have had to quickly revive and apply decades of evidence on respiratory virus transmission to chart a path forward. Over the course of the pandemic, epidemiologists have established with new certainty the fact that one of our oldest methods for controlling respiratory viruses, the face mask, remains one of the most effective tools in a pandemic.

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Prof. Robert Root-Bernstein is an immunologist and physiologist interested in the effects of combined infections on immunity vaccines. Two vaccines – pneumococcal vaccine and the Hib vaccine – protect against bacterial pneumonias. These bacteria complicate both influenza and COVID-19, often leading to death. Root-Bernstein’s examination of disease trends and vaccination rates leads him to believe that broader use of the pneumococcal and Hib vaccines could guard against the worst effects of a COVID-19 illness.

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