Covid 19 Omicron: Triple-vaxxed journalist Tracey Spicer crushed by long Covid

Australian journalist Tracey Spicer has been struck down with long Covid that has left her feeling a like "a shadow of her former self".

The 55-year-old triple-jabbed broadcaster and author caught the virus in January on a holiday to the Gold Coast.

The illness left her bedridden for two weeks. But while she has recovered from some symptoms, such as a severe cough, she remains so sick she can barely work — more than three months after catching the virus.

She told Nine News she is suffering from debilitating fatigue and chest pains that have landed her in hospital, fearing she was having a heart attack.

"I've felt like a shadow of my former self. I've been swimming through mud every day," she said. "Even cooking a meal can be absolutely crushing. I can hardly walk around the block.

"I've had the debilitating exhaustion, and I also had a very worrying four weeks where I was in and out of hospital with chest pain, I thought I was having a heart attack."

Spicer is well-known for her work with sexual assault survivors, which had an enormous public impact and led to several investigations.

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What is long Covid?

Most people who have coronavirus disease recover completely within a few weeks.

But some people — even those who had mild versions of the disease — continue to experience symptoms after their initial recovery.

According to the Mayo Clinic, older people and people with many serious medical conditions are the most likely to experience lingering Covid-19 symptoms, but even young, otherwise healthy people can feel unwell for weeks to months after infection.

Common signs and symptoms that linger over time include fatigue, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, a cough, joint pain, chest pain, and memory, concentration or sleep problems.

Warning of 'mass disability event'

A Pulitzer Prize winner has warned of a "mass disability event", as numbers of those suffering long-term symptoms after having Covid continue to grow.

Ed Yong, a science writer at The Atlantic, has been chronicling symptoms of sufferers post-Covid since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, when the term "long Covid" was yet to be coined.

He warned that the huge number of infections seen by Omicron and its predecessors will see millions of people around the world affected by a "mass disability event".

"Even if you take the most conservative estimates for the proportion of people with Covid who develop long-term symptoms, that still translates to tens of millions of people worldwide," he said.

"Some of those people will recover, but others will be disabled for the foreseeable future.

"The scale of such a mass disability event is truly hard to imagine, and it is appalling that we are forced to imagine it because two years on, long Covid still isn't being counted, and many long-haulers are still being ignored."