CINCINNATI — Cincinnati TriHealth’s Good Samaritan Hospital now has a unit devoted to treating people dealing with COVID-19 symptoms months after contracting the virus. 

A year-and-a-half into the pandemic, some hospitals in the Buckeye State, like TriHealth’s Good Samaritan, are beginning to dedicate more resources into treating patients suffering from what they call "long COVID-19."

“We started in March and April when we realized we were going to have a lot of ICU patients that were experiencing after effects of COVID,” said Dr. David Wiltse, a Pulmonary Critical Care Specialist at Cincinnati’s TriHealth’s Good Samaritan Hospital.

Wiltse said while his team expected to see a tsunami of COVID-19 ICU survivors, they didn’t expect so many who had more mild cases to need prolonged care.

“We’ve been astonished and dismayed by the number of people who appeared in need rehabilitation following this illness,” Wilste told Spectrum News.

Good Samaritan’s "Long COVID-19 Unit" involves an initial evaluation and, as needed, referrals to a network of specialists such as pulmonologists, cardiologists and neurologists, among others. According to Wilste, around 75% of the long COVID-19 patients he sees still have profound fatigue, 50% have trouble breathing and nearly 50% have cognitive issues. 

“A large number of those people are left with very serious long-term after effects,” he said. “COVID-19 is uniquely aggressive and uniquely dangerous.”

After more than 40 years in the medical field, Wilste said the aggressive and persistent nature of COVID-19 is unlike anything he’s ever seen.

“I would venture to say, in the long run when the totality of this damage is calculated, it’s going to be worse than the 1918 flu because of the long-term effects that so many people are dealing with," Wilste said. "We’ve had 39 million people that we know of who have had COVID and a lot of those people are not doing well.”

At Good Samaritan’s Long COVID-19 clinic, a wide array of specialists and clinicians combine their expertise to help patients. Wilste said they see about 10 new patients every week and he only expects that number to grow in the months ahead.

“The Mayo Clinic recently published a study of 100 COVID-19 patients. The average patient was 45 years old, had outpatient COVID and got through it but the majority are not doing well three months afterwards,” said Wilste.

If patients are still experiencing COVID-like symptoms three or more weeks after contracting the virus, Wilste recommends they contact their primary care physician for a full clinical evaluation.

Physical therapy is also a major component in the Long COVID-19 Unit at Cincinnati TriHealth’s Good Samaritan Hospital. Spectrum News spoke with Jeremy Ramage, one of Good Samaritan’s Senior Physical Therapists.

Ramage explained that physical therapy offered to patients helps address issues with balance, walking, dizziness that can occur with COVID-19 and long-COVID-19. Their team includes clinical psychology as many patients are struggling to adjust to their new and prolonged impairments that are limiting ability to return to work, affecting their self-esteem and overall sometimes mimicking PTSD symptoms.

Occupational therapy is helpful in educating patients in energy conservation for home, work and community tasks. Speech therapy can help address issues of “brain fog” (usually memory issues, slow mental processing, etc.) but also swallowing or voice issues, including those caused by hospital intubation.