“Covert fingers” can last up to 150 days in patients, study...

A new analysis by doctors at Boston Hospital and by Global Health Dermatology, in the United States, showed that patients with coronavirus can have the so-called “covid fingers” for more than a hundred days. The condition is a rash that appears on patients’ feet, even with the absence of other symptoms.

According to a BBC report, published in May of that year, the dermatological problem is not uncommon, it can appear in younger people and last for several days.

In the new research, done with hundreds of patients who had the disease, the scientists observed that some of them continued with the symptoms in the skin for several months after the diagnosis. One patient had covid fingers for 130 days, while the other remained with symptoms for 150 days.

“When we started looking at the duration of the signs, some of these patients had been experiencing lasting symptoms. Some for more than 60 days,” said Esther Freeman, one of the study’s authors and director of global health dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The specialist also points out that, unfortunately, there is not much information about a specific treatment for these patients. However, it is already known that the dermatological problem also causes hives, which can last for about five days, and papulosquamous eruptions, which remain for 20 days. In the new analysis, patients who had the skin problem also reported cough and persistent fatigue.

“These data increase our knowledge of how covid-19 can affect several different organ systems, even after patients have recovered from their acute infection,” Freeman said in a press release. “The skin can provide a visual window for the inflammation that may be occurring elsewhere in the body.”

Although the research brings promising results in relation to another symptom of covid-19, the expert says that the intention is not to cause panic in people, but to understand how the problem persists for so long in a group of patients.