Vancouver protesters ask for more funding, research into long COVID

Akshay Kulkarni · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 15, 2025 6:16 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago

Protesters demanding the authorities supply much backing and attraction for radical with agelong COVID gathered astatine a objection astatine the Vancouver Art Gallery connected Saturday.

Long COVID is simply a chronic information that tin pb to debilitating symptoms, similar encephalon fog and fatigue, months oregon adjacent years aft an acute COVID-19 infection.

No 1 knows precisely however galore radical successful B.C. person the condition, but a Statistics Canada study from December 2023 estimated determination were 3.5 cardinal Canadians who reported experiencing semipermanent symptoms pursuing a COVID-19 infection, and astir 100,000 had been incapable to instrumentality to enactment oregon schoolhouse owed to agelong COVID.

More than a twelve radical were at Saturday's protest, which marked Long COVID Awareness Day. The protestors said they consciousness forgotten and near down arsenic overmuch of the remainder of nine has moved connected from the pandemic — adjacent arsenic they stay incapable to get done day-to-day tasks.

A household doc said backing hasn't been devoted to effort and find treatments and diagnostic solutions for the condition, and the protesters want governments to act.

"At the existent time, determination are nary established diagnostic tests and nary established treatments for agelong COVID," Dr. Susan Kuo said. "And our resources for agelong COVID are precise scant."

Kuo, who is simply a Richmond, B.C.-based household physician, said she gets caller patients coming to her each week complaining of agelong COVID symptoms. According to the World Health Organization, determination could beryllium much than 200 different symptoms that impact mundane functioning.

Canada hasn't been doing capable probe connected the condition, and efforts from the U.S. National Institute of Health are present nether jeopardy owed to backing cuts from U.S. President Donald Trump, she said.

Kuo noted it took 60 years for radical to spot the afloat effect of the 1918 flu pandemic.

"These radical with agelong COVID ... they request assistance now. We can't hold 60 years."

Nicole Rogers, 1 of the organizers of Saturday's demonstration, was a teacher for 25 years earlier she got COVID-19 successful March 2020.

She continued to enactment for months aft getting COVID even arsenic her symptoms persisted but, she said, she's been chiefly housebound for the past two-and-a-half years.

"Like galore sufferers, I've tried galore supplements, antithetic off-label medications, I've had to question assistance successful the United States, but there's truly nothing," she said.

In B.C., astir agelong COVID patients are referred to a provincewide virtual betterment clinic, which was created aft 4 determination post-COVID clinics were shuttered in February 2023.

"I did be a agelong COVID session and they discharge you aft 18 months whether you've improved oregon not," Rogers said.

"A batch of the agelong COVID clinics crossed the state person either been closed down oregon are not staffed with physicians to assistance us."

The protesters program to nonstop a letter to MPs and MLAs, asking for much probe funding, disablement enactment and nationalist consciousness of the condition.