COVID-19: State of the art – DRAGON IMI project

On Thursday 29 April, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) hosted the COVID-19: State of the art – DRAGON IMI project.

The event was aimed at healthcare professionals, but there was a Patient View Round Table session in the middle of the day, which was live streamed on the ELF YouTube Channel. The session is available to watch below.

During the Patient View session, members of the ELF COVID-19 Patient Advisory Group shared their experiences of COVID-19 and had the opportunity to have their questions answered by a panel of healthcare experts.

The programme covered:

• Acute COVID-19 experiences – Ruud van der Made shared his experiences of being diagnosed with COVID-19 and how he is still feeling some of the effects, such as fatigue. However Ruud, who has a heart condition, and his wife, who has a lung condition, said they were lucky not to have been hospitalised and how they mostly recovered in a short period of time.
• Shielding and interactions with other lung diseases– Susannah Lindey talked about how she has been shielding during the pandemic because of her asthma. It meant that her son, a key worker, had to stay elsewhere. Susannah also worries that she might be more at risk of future infections as shielding means she will not have developed immunity to common viruses.
• Long-COVID – Susan Williams talked about her experiences of having long-COVID and the negative impact on her physical and mental health. She described how being a patient has made her a better physiotherapist as she now understands her patients’ needs more.
• Vaccines – Susannah Lindey and Ruud van der Made both felt positive about having their vaccine, although Susannah felt there had been some confusion about who should be prioritized for the vaccine.
• Positive outcomes – Susannah Lindey talked about some of the positives from the pandemic including how the rise in telehealth from the pandemic has meant that she has not had to go to hospital as much as usual. Ruud van der Made said that the reduced air pollution from traffic would be of benefit to people with lung conditions.

This exciting event gave patients the chance to ask their questions and provided a platform for further discussion about COVID-19.

For further information about COVID-19 visit our COVID-19 resources.

The ERS COVID-19 Task Force recently published clinical guidelines about how to treat adults who are in hospital with COVID-19. These are intended to be a ‘living’ guidelines for ongoing updates as the research develops. Access the guidelines.

ELF is planning an event on long-COVID to provide information to people still experiencing symptoms. If you have questions you would like asked or would like to get involved in the planning for this event please contact Clare.Williams@europeanlung.org

This project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 101005122. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA. More information is available at: https://www.imi.europa.eu/.

Copyright – DRAGON -The communication reflects the author’s view and neither IMI nor the European Union, EFPIA, or any Associated Partners are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.