NYC Health Department to study long COVID in patients

NYC Health Department to study long COVID patients

According to the latest CDC numbers, 6% of adults in the U.S. are dealing with the symptoms of Long COVID. Now, the New York City Health Department wants to study some of those people to see how COVID-19 impacts New Yorkers' health over time.

NEW YORK - Joel Fram is a busy musical director on Broadway who suffers from long COVID.

Fram first got infected in March 2020, days before Broadway went dark.

Four years after dealing with COVID-19, his symptoms linger.

Fram said "I also get some severe swelling in my joints and something I’ve never had before. Actual ocular migraines, where there's a pain that kind of repeatedly moves from the back of my eye to the front of my eye, um, which is quite severe."

It's why he's pleased New York City health officials just announced a plan to study long COVID.

Researchers will collect information over the next several years from 10-thousand study participants.

The Health Commissioner says this study will "develop our understanding of the disease and expand our knowledge of what people are experiencing, which can be confusing and disorienting without this understanding."

Doctor David Putrino is the director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health system.

Doctor Putrino said "this is uncharted territory for a lot of clinicians and researchers. So we need to listen to the experts and, in this case, the experts of the people living with the condition."