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.