5 Years Later, Women Are Still Living With Long Covid

The definition of long Covid, Wall explains, is broad. It’s anyone with persistent symptoms after 12 weeks of having Covid — that includes a patient of hers who had a stroke after Covid, another who’s been out of work for four years due to fatigue, and a single mum who struggles to walk up the stairs in her flat building when the lift breaks. Wall says research has been underfunded. Why? The answer might, in part, lie in the fact that women get long Covid the most. There are theories as to why this could be the case Wall explains, including that it might be to do with the X chromosome, or the fact that women make up the majority of the healthcare workforce so they got more exposed to Covid to begin with, or perhaps that many mums who needed hospital care when they first got Covid couldn’t go or rest much due to childcare responsibilities. We know women’s healthcare, specifically women of colour, has routinely been deprioritized, and Wall believes this has something to do with the lack of answers five years on. “I do suspect if this had happened to more of the male population, we wouldn’t have seen so much dismissal,” says Wall.