The University of Arizona Health Sciences is looking for people to be part of a study for long COVID.
Through a partnership and recent $7.3 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U Arizona Health Science researchers will help track the impact of lasting COVID-19 symptoms.
The CDC says 1 in 5 Americans who had COVID still have symptoms.
Joe Maier, from Tempe, is one of those still dealing with symptoms, five months later. Maier tells ABC15 he contracted the virus for the second time over the summer. Since then, he can no longer keep up with his lifestyle.
“It interrupts everything,” he said.
Maier usually works from home during the day in computer programming, but by night, a few times a week, he goes and photographs concerts. On some Saturdays, he jumps around to several shows. However, since his last COVID infection, it’s been tough to do any of that. He says it’s also exhausting to just drive even more than 30 minutes, and he needs naps constantly to recharge.
His doctor said his chronic fatigue and brain fog are symptoms of long COVID.
“Every day I want it to be over. Even accepting it, it’s just like, ‘Come on, please, let this be the last day,’” he said. “Actually, it’s probably going to take a week of me not feeling this to believe it’s actually gone and out of my system.”
Maier’s situation and many others are what researchers want to look into. Dr. Jennifer Andrews, with the University of Arizona, will be one of three investigators who will lead the study.
They’re hoping to find about a thousand people who have long COVID symptoms, people who had COVID but didn’t have the lasting symptoms and also people who have never had the virus.
“We are trying to define what this looks like,” Andrews said.
The study will take place over the next five years. Andrews said they will look back at medical records and then they’ll send questionnaires to participants over the next few years to see if their symptoms have changed at all.
“At the very least, people will understand how long this is going to take for them to get better and the type of effort that they need to make towards recovery,” she said of their goals for the study. “Once we know those types of things, then we can start shaving time off that recovery duration because if we know that people, who are experiencing neurological issues or leg weakness, need to receive these types of therapies to speed it up.”
Anyone 12 and older can sign up for the study here.
