By Staff Writer
Persons who contracted the Delta variant of COVID-19 are still exhibiting symptoms including headaches and brain fog after recovery, Guyana’s Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony said on Tuesday. He added that persons who were at risk of diabetes, would also present with this noncommunicable disease after recovery.
Dr Anthony explained that the Delta variant targets a “wide array” of organs, with effects that linger weeks and sometimes months after recovery. This phenomenon is referred to as “Long COVID”.
“Some people complain that they’re having constant headaches; they’re having what is called ‘brain fog’, meaning sometimes in the midst of a conversation they forget what they were talking about and things like that. But a lot of these things have been associated more with Delta,” he said.
He added, “One of the things we knew about COVID is that even if you were predisposed to diabetes (you had risk factors to diabetes) then in some instances, after infection, people would actually then present with diabetes, because again, COVID can affect many systems in your body and one of the systems, in this case, that it affects is the endocrine system.”
This system consists of all the glands in the body that secrete hormones. This includes, among others, the pituitary gland in the brain, which regulates growth; the ovaries and testes, which control the reproduction and secondary sex characteristics; and the pancreas, which regulates blood sugar and metabolism.
As Omicron fear continues to mount, Dr Anthony said it is unclear if this variant will have similar effects.
Omicron made headlines back in November last year, and the Minister said that not a lot of information is readily available because of this “short period of time”. Nevertheless, he said that local health officials will continue to monitor “to see whether or not, people infected with Omicron would present with symptoms of long COVID”.
