In our latest Better Health, Together video, WA Primary Health Alliance CEO, Learne Durrington speaks with Professor Jeremy Nicholson, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences at Murdoch University.
As a world leading COVID-19 expert, he talks about living with COVID, long COVID and how our health system will cope, and what we can do to prepare ourselves as individuals for the presence of COVID-19 in our community.
Some of Professor Nicholson’s key takeaways are:
- Your existing health status is a good predictor of how likely you are to experience serious disease, if you contract COVID-19, with people with underlying health conditions most at risk
- Long COVID may affect some people, maybe 5 to 10%, who contract COVID-19, with impacts potentially lasting a very long time
- Long COVID is a very complex, multi organ condition. You can stop coughing but still have a number of things “under the bonnet” that may trouble you for a couple of years
- Vaccination is important but not enough on its own to keep rates of infection down in the community, we also need to get used to public health measures such as mask wearing, social distancing and hand hygiene
You can also watch Professor Nicholson’s full video below when he talks in some depth about COVID-19, his research and findings and some staggering statistics on the impact of COVID in other countries.