Health workers with long COVID have difficulties accessing services

While working the front lines at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many health care workers are struggling to access care after contracting long COVID.

According to a report by the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ), only 12 per cent of health care workers with long COVID have received rehabilitation care.

Rehabilitation, psychological follow-ups, and occupational therapy were requested by 32 per cent of health care workers with long COVID. They were identified as the most beneficial treatments since rehabilitation services aimed at managing fatigue and daily activities.

The INSPQ data shows that nearly one in two health care workers who contracted COVID-19 and developed the long form of the disease managed to see a doctor.

The most common symptoms of long COVID illness include fatigue, shortness of breath, concentration or memory problems, and brain fog.

Simon Décary was a member of the INSPQ advisory committee on the report and works for the Health Ministry’s long-term COVID clinics. He said that he is not surprised by the lack of access to care, even for health care workers.

He added that health care workers appear to have better access to see doctor for long COVID than the general population.

“On the population side, there are huge challenges for long COVID patients to access to their family doctor who can manage this disease,” said Décary.

The report describes how access to rehabilitation services sits at 12 per cent.

“What these results tell me is that a lot of health care professionals are on the waiting list [for long COVID clinics],” he said.

Sara Carazo Perez, co-author of the report, noted a “significant gap” between the care requested by health professionals and the care received.

“Especially for certain services,” she said. “It was easier to access medical care, rather than rehabilitation care, psychological support and services to improve memory. We took a picture of what the situation was like in the summer of 2023, and we really see a difficulty in access.”

Perez said that INSPQ wanted to paint a picture of the situation and inform health authorities, but the report does not answer the question of “why” health workers with long COVID had difficulty receiving the care they requested.

“I think this situation is facing all these difficulties towards health services because it’s a new disease that requires a lot of multidisciplinary care,” said Perez.

The report shows that the situation is the same elsewhere in Canada.

According to the Canadian COVID-19 Antibody and Health Survey, less than 50 per cent of people with long COVID say they think they received the care they needed.

“That means this is not an isolated problem in Quebec,” explained Perez.

Prevalence among staff

Among health care workers who reported having COVID-19, around 15 per cent had symptoms persisting for 12 weeks or more after the initial infection. At the time of the survey, six per cent of all health care workers in Quebec were still experiencing symptoms of long COVID.

“We think our prevalence data is fairly representative, but probably has a small underestimation. Health care workers probably have a slightly higher prevalence than adults of a similar age,” said Perez.

She explained that most people who currently have long COVID were infected with the Omicron variant.

“Since the number of infections were so much greater and the proportion was smaller, ultimately most of the people who currently have long COVID were infected with Omicron. Health care workers are in a special situation because they were infected a lot at the beginning of the pandemic, much more than the general population,” said Perez.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the risk of long COVID for people who were infected was higher since it was the ancestral strain that was circulating and there were no vaccines yet.

A second phase of the INSPQ survey is already underway.

Health care workers who participated will answer the questionnaire again to see what the clinical evolution of their symptoms and access to care is.

Décary says he is hopeful that access will improve thanks to the measures currently being put in place by the Health Ministry, including training all front-line health care professionals to deal with long COVID.

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–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews