A NEW OPTION

St. Joe’s Opens Clinic for COVID Long-Haulers

Officials at St. Joseph’s Care Group have opened a new clinic that promises help for people suffering from the long-term effects of COVID-19.

The clinic offers referrals to specialists and services either within the organization or other healthcare providers in the community, depending on the symptoms patients are experiencing, says Scott Munro, the director of outpatient rehabilitative services at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Patients will have to be referred to the COVID clinic by a doctor or nurse practitioner. Results from pan-Canadian survey released in

June by Viral Neuro Exploration, the COVID Long Haulers Support Group Canada, and Neurological Health Charities Canada found that socalled “brain fog” was among the top reported symptoms for people with lingering effects of the illness, along with fatigue and shortness of breath. Additional symptoms included headaches, dizziness, and anxiety.

Once referred, patients at the COVID clinic will fill out health questionnaires about their condition to inform the clinic doctor and then they would be seen by a physician for assessment, Munro says. The doctor can then order more testing, bloodwork, and referrals to other services, such as those for mental health, pulmonary or cardiac rehabilitation, or neurology. “If there’s more medical-related issues, then the doctor would decide, based on the assessment, what they need—you know, let’s say they need to go to a neurologist or maybe they need to go to a respirologist or some other specialty medical service aside from rehab,” he says. Similar clinics have been set up in southern Ontario.

The clinic here expected to see its first patient in August. Munro says it’s an important service to have at this time in the community for those who need it, however, he doesn’t anticipate “huge volumes right now.” He says, based on the numbers of positive COVID-19 cases in the Thunder Bay district over the course of the pandemic and the frequency by which these long-term symptoms show up, he’s expecting a few hundred referrals to the clinic in the next year or so, “assuming COVID doesn’t get worse.”

“Because of the nature of the clinic [dealing with] persistent symptoms, the client I talked to today, she’s had this for over a year now,” Munro says. “So it might be something that lingers for awhile then we start to see it increase as people realize […] this is not getting better.”