Coronavirus in Navarra | Health leaves patients with persistent covid without their specific Internal Medicine consultation

However, since the Association of persistent covid of Navarra -which brings together 60 people affected by these ailments- They denounce that in June the department told them that the consultations would be suppressed in the summer, but that they would recover later, something that, according to details, has not happened. “In June they told us that they were not going to call us during the summer, but that later the consultations would recover, but this has not been the case, ”says the president of the persistent covid association in Navarra, Virginia Matthew.

As he explains, these Internal Medicine monographic consultations are “fundamental” for patients with persistent covid, especially for those who are in a worse state of health. “There are people who are really sick, people who have been carrying a persistent covid for more than a year and a half and need these consultations,” says Mateo. In fact, the patients assure that they were very happy with those visits, because in them they could explain in detail all the ailments they suffer – there are more than 200 symptoms associated with persistent covid – and the doctors requested the necessary tests. “Now they have passed us to ordinary consultations and there we hardly have time to tell what is happening to us. In addition, the revisions take a long time because there is a long waiting list ”, explains the president of the association.

Persistent covid or long covid – for its acronym in English – is a disease that is not a disease in itself but rather the maintenance of the symptoms caused by the coronavirus more than three months after diagnosis. Among the most common sequelae are lung ailments, anosmia (loss of smell and taste, although to a lesser extent with omicron), fatigue, muscle and headache pain, and memory loss or mental fog. “We are always sick and sometimes we have terrible peaks, that is why we ask Salud to resume the consultations we had before,” claims Mateo.

a readjustment

On behalf of Health, the manager of Osasunbidea, Gregorio Achuteguimaintains that at this time the department does not consider these consultations “strictly necessary”, once these patients are treated in Internal Medicine through the ordinary route. “We are in a moment of transition and just as we have readjusted the covid quota, we have also done so with these consultations. Initially some estimates were made and now they are adjusting to reality. In any case, depending on the demand that there is, we will be able to review the situation”, declares Achutegui, who adds that, for the moment, “They have had no complaints from the patients.”

Likewise, the manager of Osasunbidea considers that the time in ordinary Internal Medicine consultations “should not be a problem” since in the first consultation a questionnaire and an assessment of their situation are carried out, but later this “remains stored in the patient’s history”.