Michelle Chason, a reiki master from Tallahassee, Florida, was diagnosed with COVID-19 on June 15, 2020. First, she developed a dry mouth. Then came the ugly spells of vertigo that led to the spinning of the chambers and interruptions.
Chason gave negative results a month later, but still did not feel well. The left side of her face is ant. He felt pain in his chest, had a debilitating brain fog and began to experience short-term memory problems. Four months after the initial diagnosis, in October, Chason’s doctor told him that he had been suffering from COVID for a long time.
As the vaccines began to unfold, Chason planned to wait and see how other long-distance carriers reacted before wrapping their sleeves. But on February 10, her doctor offered her the Pfizer vaccine and she got the fire.
Four days after the first dose, Chason said, the symptoms – dizziness, nausea, loss of appetite, chills – struck like lightning. “I’ve been through everything I’ve been dealing with since I had COVID,” Chason said.
A few days later, the vast majority of her long-term COVID symptom – brain fog, chest pain and tingling in the face – became clear. “I am better, I feel better. I’m not 100% in the pre-COVID days, but I’m close, “Chason told HuffPost.
Around the world, many other people with long-distance symptoms – a condition now clinically defined as post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 or feed – reported similar experiences after administration of a vaccine.
A recent informal survey from the Survivor Corps, a Facebook community of COVID-19 survivors, found that 36% of people with long-distance symptoms noticed improvements in their condition after vaccination. About 50% remained the same. Other unofficial investigations they also estimated that about a third of patients with long COVID feel better after receiving a vaccine.
At the same time, many others with PASC are hesitating to get vaccinated, worried, the shooting could exacerbate the symptoms over long distances. They worry that they will be hit with side effects in addition to the devastating and long COVID pain.
In general, vaccines do not appear to worsen long-term symptoms of COVID. Johnson & Johnson studies enrolled several people who previously had COVID-19, and those people did not have a reinflammatory reaction or a particularly worse effect, according to F. Perry Wilson, Yale Medicine physician and researcher at the Yale School of Medicine.
But doctors know very little about PASC and how those with the condition could respond to a vaccine. So while it seems that the shot could improve long COVID symptoms in a small group of people, much of what we know today is based on anecdotes.
How long COVID works and how it could affect vaccines
“We don’t know who gets PASC, who avoids it, what causes it or how to diagnose it effectively,” he said. William Li, a vascular biologist and medical director of Angiogenesis Foundation. Without these answers, it is difficult to clearly see the impact of vaccines on long-haul carriers, for better or worse.
Li said the researchers looked at several theories about what happens with PASC. First, the virus can damage tissues.
“Maybe you’ve been beaten by the virus and it will last a while,” Wilson added. Some researchers believe that there may be continuous inflammation, and a third theory is that people with PASC have nerve defects.
The final running theory is that long-distance carriers may have pieces of virus hidden in their bodies. These viral bits would probably be undetectable in a PCR diagnostic test often used to diagnose COVID-19 – which makes sense because most patients with PASC test negative – but these viral remnants could trigger symptoms.
If this proves to be the case, a vaccine could activate the immune system enough to eliminate the virus that is hiding and reset things. “We can’t explain this yet, but it suggests that boosting the immune system could make a difference for some long-term carriers,” Li said.
Wilson said it is also totally plausible that PASC symptoms may simply improve over time, and given that these patients have had symptoms for some time, events may occur during vaccination.
There is much more to learn about long COVID and vaccines
We need much more evidence to find out why some people never fully recover and if and how vaccines can help.
“More research needs to be done on this phenomenon, but the observation may be an important indication of how PASC should be treated,” Li said.
The National Institutes of Health have been launched an investigation in February to study long COVID. And as more long-haul carriers receive vaccines, doctors will have a better idea of whether the shots could be used as a possible treatment for PASC.
Currently, most doctors recommend long carriers to go ahead and take pictures. Evidence shows that vaccines are safe in a variety of circumstances.
“They may be really good, but they’re going to be good,” Wilson said.