For the millions of people in the United States with long COVID, getting help comes down to where they live. Long COVID clinics have been popping up, but their accessibility and the kind of care they offer vary wildly.
In March 2020, New York City’s hospitals filled up with patients desperately ill with Covid-19. In many cases, when their fluid-filled lungs could no longer give them oxygen, doctors sedated them and put them on ventilators.
The patients who recovered were taken off the machines and anesthesia. Within a day or so, their doctors expected them to wake up.
More than a quarter of Floridians who know they've had COVID say they've also experienced the often disabling aftereffects known as long COVID, according to recent CDC data.
...
Florida lacks an adequate number of long COVID treatment options to meet the need, Survivor Corps, an advocacy group for COVID care and research, told Axios.
The group has identified only four active long COVID clinics in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
Amid a growing wave of closures in the last decade (and fears of more on the way), rural hospitals were hopeful the program would provide them with a solution that would help them survive.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24143988/GettyImages_1378994532_dot.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/KZPUEHLL6RIEPDTQGT2WM6TRRU.jpg)
