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Four years ago in the spring of 2020, doctors and patients coined the term “long COVID” to describe a form of the viral infection from which recovery seemed impossible.

What started as a pandemic that killed nearly 3 million people globally in 2020 alone would turn into a chronic disease causing a long list of symptoms — from extreme fatigue, to brain fog, tremors, nausea, headaches, rapid heartbeat and more. Today, Americans report symptoms of long COVID, and many have never recovered.

But today, 4 years in, we’ve come a long way, even though there’s still a lot that we don’t understand about the condition. Doctors have a much greater understanding that long COVID exists and can cause serious long-term symptoms.

While physicians may not have a blanket diagnostic tool that works for all long COVID patients, they have refined existing tests for more accurate results, said Nisha Viswanathan, MD, director of the UCLA Long COVID program. A range of new treatments, now undergoing clinical trials, have emerged that have proved to be effective in managing long COVID symptoms. Head over to WebMD to read the full story.