Unsuitable for fatigue syndrome: sports therapy could harm long-Covid patients

A large proportion of long-Covid patients complain of tiredness and exhaustion. Sports and exercise therapies are rather unsuitable for this fatigue syndrome, physicians determined at a congress in Jena. They could even aggravate the situation of the patients.

According to doctors, sports and exercise therapies as classic offers of rehabilitation cures are not suitable for the majority of people suffering from the long-term effects of a corona infection. In Long Covid patients who suffered from extreme exhaustion (fatigue), the symptoms could even worsen after physical exertion, it said on Saturday at the first congress of the Long Covid Medical Association.

“We have to move away from sport as a classic rehabilitation component for these patients,” said doctor Claudia Ellert from the Long Covid Germany initiative. Fatigue is considered one of the most common symptoms of Long Covid. In view of the large number of symptoms associated with this disease, “extremely flexible” offers of medical rehabilitation are necessary for those affected, according to Ellert. Training, education and socio-medical advice are particularly important for them so that the sick can return to their everyday lives.

In view of the large number of possible symptoms of Long Covid, patients should “not all be lumped together,” said lung specialist Jördis Frommhold, who has treated more than 5500 Long Covid patients at the rehabilitation clinic in Heiligendamm. The symptoms are what matters. “This also applies to rehabilitation when selecting the clinics.”

Frommhold is President of the Long Covid Medical Association, which has been holding its first congress in Jena since Friday with more than 2,000 on-site or digital participants. Experts from Germany, Great Britain, South Africa, the USA and Brazil will exchange findings on the diagnosis and therapy of Long Covid.

The German patient guidelines define complaints that persist for more than four weeks after the corona infection as long covid, and they last longer than twelve weeks as post covid subform.