Long-term symptoms caused by omicron variant 'are life-destroying,' says expert

Omicron is definitely different from other variants that have come before. It's more transmissible and causes milder illness than previous, but it's still unclear how the lingering effects of the variant differ from delta and other mutations.

Now, nearly two years into the pandemic, attention is shifting slightly from just prevention and treatment of the virus to the long-term effects the virus can cause.

Some of these effects fall into a different category, of "longer healing," said Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, Director of the Tobacco Treatment Clinic and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine on KCBS Radio's " Ask an Expert " with Holly Quan and Dan Mitchinson on Friday.

"Think of a broken bone, when the bone is healed, you're still going to have some symptoms before you can feel fully functional," he said.

The second category of long-term effects includes patients that had underlying illnesses that were exacerbated by the virus, like asthma .

And the final category is "very new pathology, ones we've never read in medical textbooks and we're trying to figure out them in real-time – how to diagnose, how to treat," said Galiatsatos.

A lot of the patients dealing with the new pathology post-COVID-19 infection are showing significant changes in their autoimmune process, which can manifest in a wide range of symptoms, including fatigue .

"Patients will tell you it feels like an anchor," he said. "And the result is people losing their relationships, losing their jobs."

Cases of mild COVID-19 illness, where a patient showed mild symptoms, and are most often now exhibiting these autoimmune changes.

It’s been distressing for health experts to hear that omicron is mild, when this phenomenon is happening more and more. "I've been screaming, I'm like, 'This does not mean we let down our guard,'" said Galiatsatos.

Mild is more of a medical term, he said, that is used to essentially mean that hospitalization isn't required for this illness.

The majority of the patients Galiatsatos is seeing in his post-COVID-19 clinic are people who came in with mild COVID-19 symptoms but now can't shake the lingering effects.

"These aren't life-threatening, these are life-destroying," he said. "Mother Nature, she is very diabolical."