Long Covid: a patient monitoring platform planned before the end of the year

Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credit: JUAN MABROMATA / AFP 13:30 pm, August 29, 2023

A monitoring platform to better take care of people suffering from long Covid, subject of a law voted nearly 18 months ago, should finally "arrive before the end of the year", said Tuesday the deputy Renaissance Stephanie Rist. "The establishment of this platform should arrive before the end of the year" and "will allow people to be better informed, better followed and to know close to home what are the possibilities of care," said the MP, also general rapporteur of the Social Affairs Committee, on franceinfo.

Inability to live

Parliament definitively adopted on January 13, 2022, by a vote of the Senate, a UDI bill to create a specific monitoring platform for patients with long Covid. The implementing decrees have not yet been published. "But, already, there may be recognitions in long-term affection for some long Covid or management in occupational disease. There is no need to wait for these decrees, "said the elected representative of Loiret and doctor.

And the care of patients with long Covid can go through the attending physician, she noted. "It is important to already take into account medically these long Covid, they are rather non-specific symptoms (fatigue, joint pain ...) to a disease but which result in a very significant disability in life. As a rheumatologist, I see him regularly," Rist said.

"Research continues"

The High Authority of Health must also "publish soon a guide of care", according to her. And "the search continues," she observed. "Long Covid patients must not be forgotten by the crisis," said the MP. But "on the ground, we always have a great difficulty of recognition, there are still many doctors who do not know what the long Covid is, who do not believe their patients," lamented the president of the association of patients "After J20", Pauline Oustric, at the microphone of franceinfo.

His association wants "a homogenized and facilitated recognition in occupational disease". The "long Covid" affected 4% of adults in France, or 2.06 million people, a small proportion (1.2%) declaring themselves strongly embarrassed in their daily activities, according to a study by Public Health France carried out in autumn 2022.