Exactly three years ago today, we were doing FaceTime interviews with Californians quarantined on the Grand Princess Cruise ship just outside of San Francisco Bay. The California National Guard Air dropped test kits as suspected cases of COVID-19 swept through the boat. And this Saturday marks three years since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. And now the worst of COVID? It seems to be in the rearview mirror. The state just lifted its COVID state of emergency last week, and then the federal government is set to do the same. In May, but for some people, the effects of the virus are not going away. Becca Habegger spoke with a 42 year old man out in Rancho Cordova who has been experiencing long COVID for three years. I'm just a person that got COVID in the first wave March 2020. I'm just living with the the post effects of that. Justin Wilhite has been suffering from the effects of post acute COVID syndrome, commonly known as long COVID, for three years. Now, March 4th, I wake up, I have a headache, my lungs kind of feel like glass. I feel really short of breath. Wheel height has type one diabetes, one of the health conditions that puts someone at greater risk of getting a serious COVID infection. He thinks he caught the virus. At work and the effects are still lingering. Everyday I deal with incredible fatigue, shortness of breath, and that's just getting up. Walking to the bathroom, my daily activity, and it wipes me out and it it acts like a workout for me, is going downstairs and back up. If I do that three times the next day, my legs don't work. And it's been this way every day since March 4th, 2020. ABC 10 first spoke with Willhite three years ago after he was hospitalized with COVID. Then four months later, I'm kind of sick of being sick at this point. And it's it's been a long time since I've been healthy and again in 2021. It's like being sick every day of your life and the symptoms haven't gone away. He says brain fog and muscle weakness make him unable to work. He uses a wheelchair due to chronic fatigue. For some people, it's as little as just, you know, I have sinus drainage. It's out of control. For other people, it's I'm profoundly debilitated, can't do very much. Incredibly short of breath, bad headaches. Doctor Brad Sanville is a pulmonary and critical care physician at UC Davis. He's been working with long COVID patients since UC Davis Health launched its post COVID-19 clinic in the fall of 2020. long COVID is typically defined as symptoms that last beyond eight weeks after the patients. Recovered from their infection, he says. Will Heidi's case is rare but not unprecedented. Most people will improve and kind of the months to within a year. That's probably the vast majority, but there's a small handful that continue to have symptoms for quite a long time, even even a couple years out, he says. long COVID patients with shortness of breath or trouble walking don't always have long or heart damage. Rather, he thinks chronic fatigue syndrome could be to blame. The fatigue I think is so overpowering for people it. Makes them perceive everything as being short of breath, when really it might just be really profound fatigue and we can't find anything like obviously wrong with their lungs, with their heart. To explain it, he hopes to see more research on and treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome. Meanwhile, Willhite is grieving the loss of who he was. You know, I'm alive. But there isn't much of me behind there. That's been the one thing that's been really hard not being able to live while still being alive. He credits his wife and three sons for keeping him going these past three years. Doctor Sanville tells us that there is some research that suggests that a person is less likely to have long COVID symptoms if they're vaccinated, so he encourages people to keep up on their vaccinations and boosters to protect themselves.
