970 - What We Know—and Still Don't Know—About Long COVID
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 30 October 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
Millions of people across the globe continue to grapple with debilitating long COVID symptoms, as researchers untangle the unknowns of the condition. In this episode: Alba Azola, who leads long COVID research and treatment at Johns Hopkins, lays out the data on who's being diagnosed with long COVID, available treatment options, and the future of post-infectious chronic disease research.
Guests:
Dr. Alba Azola is a rehabilitation physician and the co-director of the Long COVID/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Clinic at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Host:
Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.
Show links and related content:
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4 years later, experts are just beginning to 'scratch the surface' of understanding long COVID—ABC News
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Unraveling Long COVID's Causes and Impacts—Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine
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BONUS: Checking In With A COVID Long-hauler—Public Health On Call (November 2021)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh. |
| 0:21.6 | JhU.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.5 | It's Lindsay Smith Rogers. |
| 0:33.5 | More than five years after the start of the COVID pandemic, Dr. Alba Azola continues to see patients |
| 0:38.5 | in her long COVID clinic at Johns Hopkins. Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to her about who's still |
| 0:43.6 | impacted by long COVID, what we've learned about its causes, and why more research is needed to |
| 0:48.4 | better understand treatment and prevention. Let's listen. Alba Azola, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 0:56.1 | Thank you so much for having me, |
| 1:03.7 | Stephanie. The topic today is long COVID, and I feel like it's something that we don't talk about a lot anymore, but it's still a real problem for a lot of people. So I'm wondering if you could |
| 1:08.4 | sort of paint a picture of where we are. Yeah, very much so. I think people were so eager to move on from the pandemic that the public |
| 1:17.4 | coverage and interest in anything COVID has been lingering and going away. But it is very much |
| 1:25.6 | of our issue. As we know now, that about 10% of people that have an |
| 1:32.3 | infection with SARS-CoV-2 present with lingering symptoms. And in some of these cases, the lingering |
| 1:38.8 | symptoms can be quite debilitating and the ability to continue working, to do their day-to-day activities. And those |
| 1:46.6 | patients that started with long COVID symptoms earlier in the pandemic, there's a subgroup of |
| 1:53.4 | them that are still quite impaired. And as you know, people are still getting SARS-COVID to |
| 1:58.3 | infections. So we are seeing new onset of long COVID after multiple SARS-COVID to infections. So we are seeing new onset of long COVID |
| 2:02.5 | after multiple SARS-COVIDs. So what are the symptoms that we're seeing? |
| 2:09.1 | I would say the predominant symptom is fatigue, severe debilitating fatigue. Along with that, |
... |
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