Opinion by Richard Sternberg
Long COVID

The concept of Long COVID has become a hot topic, especially since people are finally becoming aware that having COVID–19 is not just an acute respiratory syndrome that may or may not lead up to death but a very complicated potentially lifelong debilitating disease process. While there is a general agreement on what Long COVID is, there is no uniform definition internationally and it is not clear that some long-term post COVID complications such as Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) should be classed as Long COVID or in a separate category. At this time, it is really a matter of semantics. The term Long COVID is probably a patient created term first cited in May 2020. Other names for this syndrome include post-COVID-19 syndrome, post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), and chronic COVID syndrome.