{"id":388441,"date":"2024-09-09T18:10:40","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T16:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2024\/09\/09\/commissione-ue-long-covid\/"},"modified":"2024-09-13T16:17:51","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T14:17:51","slug":"new-eu-commission-program-to-study-long-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/09\/09\/new-eu-commission-program-to-study-long-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"New EU Commission program to study long COVID"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – Four years after the outbreak of the\u00a0<\/span>coronavirus pandemic<\/strong>, the EU executive will initiate a\u00a0<\/span>program<\/strong>\u00a0to study the so-called <\/span>l<\/strong><\/span>ong COVID syndrome,<\/strong>\u00a0that is, the\u00a0<\/span>prolonged persistence of some of the symptoms of SARS-CoV-2<\/strong>\u00a0infection in patients weeks or even months after recovery.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On Tuesday (Sept. 10), Health and Food Safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides<\/strong> will officially launch a project with a budget of about two million euros<\/strong>, funded by the Eu4Health<\/strong> program and managed by Brussels in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO)<\/strong>and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)<\/strong>. Among the planned actions will be creating a panel of experts<\/strong>\u00a0tasked with collecting the testimonies and experiences of patients with the syndrome.<\/p>\n

The main areas of intervention\u00a0<\/strong>will be seven: the most precise possible definition<\/strong> of long COVID syndrome, the development of a monitoring and surveillance system<\/strong>, the promotion of information exchange<\/strong> among health professionals, the dissemination of clinical guidelines and recommendations<\/strong> to relevant authorities in member states, the\u00a0support for patients<\/strong> and their caregivers, the\u00a0assessment of the socio-economic consequences<\/strong> of long COVID, and, finally, the\u00a0identification of gaps<\/strong> in scientific research.\u200b<\/span><\/p>\n

Although it has now been four years since the most acute phase of the pandemic, studies on the long COVID clinical syndrome are still ongoing<\/strong>\u00a0to define its characteristics and causes more precisely. Only a portion of those who have contracted COVID-19 develop these symptoms, but the<\/strong> mechanisms that determine and regulate its onset have not yet been fully elucidated<\/strong>. Among the factors that appear to be involved are direct damage to the body caused by the infection or disease and an abnormal response of the immune system (which develops a kind of “autoimmunity”). It appears that risk factors then include older age, female sex, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.<\/p>\n

Although, as a rule, there is some correlation between the severity of the disease and the risk of onset<\/strong> of long COVID, cases of the latter have been reported even after relatively mild forms of SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially with regard to the Omicron<\/strong> variant\u2014in fact, the percentage of patients infected with Omicron who develop Long COVID syndrome is lower than that of those infected with the Delta variant, but as the former has become more widespread the absolute number of patients with Long COVID from Omicron tends to be higher. In any case, evidence seems to indicate that a full vaccination cycle<\/strong> (with three doses) relatively effectively protects against long COVID.<\/p>\n

According to WHO data, about 36 million people in Europe<\/strong> were affected by\u00a0long COVID between 2020 and 2023, while the European Commission estimates the cost of the syndrome on the economy of the Twenty-Seven<\/strong> to be between 0.2 and 0.3 per cent of GDP<\/strong> for 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientific studies continue on the virus that brought the world to a standstill in 2020, particularly on the symptoms that continue to occur several weeks after patients become negative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":388413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25712],"tags":[25871,27419,28947,28948,26974,26918],"class_list":["post-388441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-covid-19-en","tag-long-covid-en","tag-ocse-en","tag-omsand","tag-stella-kyriakidesat"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388441"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":388482,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388441\/revisions\/388482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}