Potential of Ayurveda in the prevention and management of post-COVID complications.

Abstract

COVID-19, a global pandemic has affected individuals to varying degrees, ranging from a few days of mild symptoms to respiratory distress requiring intensive care unit (ICU) treatment including ventilator support, and even death. Early in the pandemic, it was believed that COVID-19 was a short-term illness. In February 2020, the World Health Organization reported that from the onset to clinical recovery for mild cases the duration was approximately 2 weeks and that recovery took 3–6 weeks for patients with the severe or critical disease.[1] However, recently it has become clear that in some patients debilitating symptoms persist for weeks or even months. This means that a subset of people who have recovered from COVID-19 continue to experience symptoms that remain beyond testing negative for the virus. “Long-COVID” or “COVID long-haulers” or post-COVID Syndrome generally describes those persons with COVID-19 who experience symptoms for >28 days after diagnosis.[2] Though long‐term sequelae of COVID‐19 are unidentified, but evidence from previous outbreaks demonstrates that the most common conditions are impaired pulmonary and physical function, reduced quality of life and emotional distress, which indicates psychological, physical, and cognitive impairments and has huge downstream effects on a person’s quality of life-impacting family life and work productivity.