Long-Term Symptoms among COVID-19 Survivors in Prospective Cohort Study, Brazil

U nderstanding is growing that coronavirus disease (COVID-19) can evolve and continue to cause prolonged symptoms, characterizing the post-COVID-19 condition (1-3).Potential implications go beyond effects on individual patients and might represent an additional burden on healthcare services and social security, which are both already affected by the pandemic.Therefore, learning more about the long-term repercussions of the disease among different populations is essential.This study aimed to describe the occurrence of long-term physical, psychological, and social consequences among patients who survived COVID-19 and received follow-up care at a post-COVID-19 outpatient clinic at a university hospital in Brazil. The StudyThis prospective cohort study (RECOVIDA) was performed among patients attending a post-COVID-19 outpatient clinic at Ribeirão Preto Medical School University Hospital, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil (4).The institutional review board approved the research protocol.All adults with PCR-confi rmed COVID-19 with symptom onset during February 1-December 31, 2020, who attended follow-up appointments at the study clinic were eligible.Most participants (85.7%) had been discharged after being hospitalized for COVID-19.The remaining participants (14.3%) were mostly healthcare workers from the study facility.No participants had been previously vaccinated against COVID-19.Patients were classifi ed into 3 groups according to the World Health Organization (WHO) severity classifi cation of COVID-19: mild/moderate, severe, and critical (5) (Appendix Table 1, https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/EID/article/28/3/21-2020-App1.pdf).This study was exploratory, and sample size was established through convenience.We aimed to include all patients who attended the clinic during the study period and agreed to participate.Participants were recruited just before the scheduled medical consultation.After the informed consent form was signed, we performed a structured interview and a brief physical examination.We obtained secondary data from patients' electronic health records.Laboratory and imaging tests were performed at the attending physician's clinical discretion.We collected study data by using the Research Electronic Data Capture platform (6).We collected information on economic and demographic social profi le, medical history, date of symptom onset, hospitalization data, laboratory and imaging test results, persistent symptoms, and quality of life.We assessed quality of life by using the WHO Quality of Life questionnaire (7-9) (Appendix).The date of symptom onset was used as the reference for follow-up.