Unlocking the Mysteries of Long COVID
Meghan O'Rourke
Photographs by Jonno Rattman
Image above: Nearly a year after she was infected with the coronavirus, Caitlin Barber still uses a wheelchair outside.
This article was published online on March 8, 2021.
The quest at Mount Sinai began with a mystery. During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in New York City, Zijian Chen, an endocrinologist, had been appointed medical director of the hospital’s new Center for Post-COVID Care, dedicated both to research and to helping recovering patients “transition from hospital to home,” as Mount Sinai put it. One day last spring, he turned to an online survey of COVID‑19 patients who were more than a month past their initial infection but still experiencing symptoms. Because COVID‑19 was thought to be a two-week respiratory illness, Chen anticipated that he would find only a small number of people who were still sick. That’s not what he saw.