Health care and workplaces must adjust for long covid

AS THE WORLD enters the second year of the pandemic, two crises are unfolding. The more urgent and visible one is in poor countries like India, where a surge of covid-19 cases is threatening to overwhelm the state. India is recording more than 350,000 cases a day, and many more than that are thought to be going undetected (see Asia section). The suffering is grievous. Oxygen supplies at Indian hospitals are running far short of what is needed, and crematoriums are overwhelmed.

The other crisis is more subtle. This is long covid, which is becoming apparent in rich countries like America, Britain and Israel that have largely vaccinated their way out of the pandemic, but which will affect poor ones, too. Post-covid syndrome, to give it its formal name, is a set of symptoms affecting any part of the body that persist for at least three months after a bout of covid-19. Three stand out: breathlessness, fatigue and “brain fog”. In Britain three in every five people with long covid say their usual activities are somewhat limited, and one in five says they are limited “a lot”—which often means being unable to do even a part-time, desk-based job.