56% of Delhi NCR residents who had COVID/viral infection with similar symptoms in last 45 days experienced lingering cough

May 8, 2023, New Delhi: On May 5th, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency though it is still a global health threat. In mid April, it had added XBB.1.16, nicknamed as Arcturus, as a variant of interest.

Though registered active COVID cases in India have dropped to around 30,000, one issue that people have been reporting on LocalCircles is the lingering conditions some are still experiencing several weeks post their COVID or viral infection. The reporting has been the highest from residents of Delhi and NCR region. Delhi NCR had high prevalence of XBB.1.16 in April and almost 1 in 2 households surveyed in third week of April in a LocalCircles survey indicated that 1 or more individuals had Covid symptoms.

With many in the city reporting lingering symptoms, LocalCircles conducted a fresh survey in the first week of May to find out exactly what people were still experiencing. It asked residents of Delhi and the 4 NCR cities of Gurugram, Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad, “What are all the symptoms 1 or more members in your family are still experiencing post their COVID / viral infection in the last 45 days?” Some among the 10,822 respondents to this query pointed to more than one health issue. The biggest complaint by 56% of respondents is “lingering cough”; 22% of those surveyed complained of “lingering breathlessness”; 22% complained of “lingering fatigue”; 11% have “lingering cold”; 11% are experiencing “lingering joint pain”; 11% have lingering chest inflammation”; and 11% also problem of “lingering stuttering”. The survey result seems to indicate impact on the lung or respiratory system of Delhi NCR residents.

As more people contract and survive COVID-19, a clearer picture of how people recover from the illness has begun to emerge. As a result, a new term -- “medium COVID” -- is beginning to enter the conversation. It’s being used to describe the first two to three months of a protracted post-COVID recovery. It’s impossible to predict whether lingering symptoms will persist for weeks, months or even longer. The key here for impacted residents of Delhi is to monitor themselves and if these symptoms persist for more than 30-45 days to consult their Doctor and get additional tests/investigations done.

The overall approach of managing COVID, complying to COVID norms like masking and social distancing was implemented poorly at best in Delhi and NCR cities. It was only in the third week of April when masks were made mandatory in some cities and that too with zero enforcement. The risk at hand here from the very beginning has been that of repeat infections and whether the probability of long COVID rises as the number of infections rise for an individual, something that must be studied.

56% of Delhi NCR residents who had COVID or illness with similar symptoms in the last 45 days experiencing lingering cough