Covid is largely thought of as an illness tha⛦t mostly affects your lungs, with the effect it can have on the brain less known.
But as well as causing obvious physical symptoms, the virus can also spark neurological ones too — and these are the ones that tend to last longer.
In what is traditionally a respiratory illness, medics were surprised when people began complaining of headaches, delirium, and loss of smell or taste at the start o🌳f the pandemic.
And in the more serious𓂃ly ill, things like strokes and blocked blood vessels in the brain were soon being reported.
A string of hugely positive studies show Omicron is milder than other strains, with the first of🍷ficial UK report revealing the risk of h🌳ospitalization is .
Covid booster jabs protect against Omicron and offer the best cha𝓀nce to get through the pandemic, health officials have repeatedly said.
The Sun’s Jabs Army campaign is helping get the vital extra vaccines in Brits’ arms to ward off the need for any new restrictions.
One in five Covid patients could 💟suffer with cerebral vascular events, according to Professor James Goodwin.
He explained this is because infections send our imm✃une system into overdrive, and in some people who have a huge viral load, it can cause an uncontrolled𒉰 response.
This is the release of a large amount of inflammatory molecules — known as a cytokine storm — to the infected area.
It mainly affects the lungs, and can spark acute respiꦺratory distress syndrome, failure and sometimes death.
But it’s not only the lungs that are hit by an immune system in overdrive — other organs such as the heart, liver and kidneys can be damaged due to inflammation and blood clotting.
The brain can also be hit by this too, and become injured in the body’s attempt to fight back against the virus.
Professor Go𒆙odwin said medics now know that Covid gets into the brain through tightly sealed blood vessels which surro🥀und the organ.
Spikes in the virus grab onto receptors, replicate inside them and the☂n move on into the brain.
With the body in panic-mode an inflammation response tries to✅ defeat the virus by breaking down the blood vessels, causing damage which also impacts the immune system.
7 neurological events caused by Covid:
- Headaches
- Brain fog
- Delirium
- Strokes
- Blood clots
- Loss of smell
- Hallucinations
After recovering some people can then experience serious neurological, behavi🐻oral or psychiatric disorders, due to the (often temporary) scars left in the brain.
These can include hallucinations and hearing sounds that aren’t there, as the brain reconfigures itself after the virus.
And you don’t have to have been struck down terribly badly to experience mild neurological issues or brain fog while recovering from Covid.
In fact, the , even with milder Omicron.
It is simply from the virus having invaded — or tried to invade — your brain and the damage done to the cells in the subsequent battle.
But this doesn’t need to be a frightening read, as research shows the cells repair quickly and efficiently, as well as being pretty resilient.
It might just mean a few days, weeks, or months in some unlucky cases, of feeling not quite as sharp as normal – as your brain bounces back.
However if you or a loved one starts to display unusual behಞavior or hallucinating, get medical help as soon as possible.
This article originally appeared on and was reproduced here with permission.