Introduction:
As documented in cases with other viral infections, it is expected that
a good portion of COVID-19 survivors will suffer from some form of
post-COVID fatigue. However, the researchers and the community are still
in the dark about the prevalence of post-COVID-19 fatigue and associated
factors for the persistent symptoms. Chronic tiredness is the most
common manifestation of fatigue. The fatigue may be reported as muscle
weakness, slowed reflexes and responses, impaired decision-making and
judgment, dizziness, sleep disturbance, and a majority of these remain
undiagnosed (Perin et al., 2020; Griffith & Zarrouf, 2008). It usually
settles after 2 or 3 weeks of viral illness; however, it can linger for
weeks or months in some people. The exact mechanism of fatigue is
unknown and multifactorial theories are well accepted (Cho et al., 2006;
Tanriverdi et al., 2007).
The long term consequence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS
caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV) that emerged from South East
Asia in early 2003 was assessed in a Toronto study. It showed a good
percentage of survivors experienced fatigue even after one year of the
initial infection (Moldofsky & Patcai, 20211). In a similar follow-up
study in Hong Kong, over 40% of respondents from 233 SARS survivors
reported a chronic fatigue problem 40 months after infection (Lam et
al., 2009). During the Middle-Eastern Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus
(MERS-CoV) outbreak, a longitudinal study revealed that many MERS
survivors suffered from chronic fatigue even more than one year after
the outbreak in South Korea. The prevalence rate of CFS was about 32.7%
at 18 months after the MERS outbreak (Lee et al., 2019).
The study on fatigue syndrome among COVID-19 survivors is limited. A
recent study in Ireland assessed the prevalence of fatigue in patients
recovered from the acute phase of COVID-19 illness using the Chalder
Fatigue Score (CFQ-11); more than half of affected people were reported
to have persistent fatigue (67/128; 52.3%) at the median of 10 weeks
after initial COVID-19 symptoms (Townsend et al., 2020). This was a
small study and involved both admitted and non-admitted COVID patients.
We wanted to assess if the Irish study’s result is replicated in more
extensive research in Bangladesh. Moreover, our study also aimed to look
into other associations and predictors of post-COVID 19 fatigues, which
were not evaluated in most other studies.