'Middle-aged women do seem to be one of those groups that might have slightly higher rates of long COVID.' 9News
Deb Eveniss was once an active and healthy 46-year-old. Now, she struggles to lift her arms in the shower.
"It's like your nervous system has said 'nup, you're not functioning anymore', and your legs don't work, your chest is heavy and you can barely breathe," Eveniss said. "I took a lot of time off work, thinking if I just rest I'll knock this on the head, this post-viral syndrome, like any virus, it will right itself," she said."Every time I thought I was better I'd go back to what I thought was normal I would just end up back in bed."
While official data does not yet exist, the World Health Organisation predicts 10 to 20 per cent of the over 570 million people worldwide who have had COVID-19 – including 8.5 million Australians – will develop long COVID-19."At the moment we don't really know why some people get long COVID and we don't really have a good way of trying to fix that for them," infectious disease expert Dr Paul Griffin said.