Long COVID patients enrolled in a study at Stanford University have left because staff did not wear masks while caring for them.
Participants were enrolled in a clinical trial examining whether the drug Paxlovid would work to reduce symptoms of a long COVID.
Over the course of the 15-week study, participants were expected to visit the clinic in person five times, but after the mask requirement was dropped, several participants said the researchers stopped covering their faces.
The strikes were first mentioned on April 28 in a Reddit post on a forum for those suffering from long-term COVID.
Long COVID patients taking part in a Stanford University study have left because staff on visits to the Palo Alto clinic (pictured) did not wear masks while caring for them.
The Stanford Medicine study’s lead investigators, clinical assistant professor Linda Geng (left) and infectious disease professor Upinder Singh (right), did not comment on the strikes, but a Stanford Medicine spokesman said: “The wearing of masks in all clinic settings are no longer required’
“We traveled hundreds of miles for months to try to participate in their study and get YOU data on the disease and that’s what they think of us,” wrote the Reddit user, whose wife took part in the study, aloud Daily Beast.
“It is frankly despicable, selfish behavior and it not only demonstrates a complete lack of respect and understanding for the disease in question but, in my opinion, calls into question the legitimacy of the entire study,” they added.
Masking is no longer mandated by the California Department of Health and the Santa Clara County Public Health Service, where the Stanford Infectious Disease Clinic is located and where the study took place.
The Daily Beast spoke to at least two people in the study who withdrew due to lack of masks. If released, Stanford Medicine would only confirm that one patient in the Paxlovid study withdrew over concerns about masks.
“I knew mask mandates were being dropped, but I naively assumed that staff interacting with long COVID patients would still wear masks,” said Olivia H., a patient in the study who requested for privacy reasons that her full last name will be withheld, told The Daily Tier.
“I was really disappointed when the research assistant and nurse entered my room without a mask,” she added.
“I would expect that all staff involved in the study would understand that long COVID patients are inherently immunocompromised and would take the necessary steps to protect what little health we have left from further deterioration,” she said.
The study’s lead investigators, clinical assistant professor Linda Geng and infectious disease professor Upinder Singh, did not respond to requests for comment.
Vinay Prasad, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco, questioned why participants would worry about contracting COVID if they had already contracted the virus
After study participants first spoke out against the study, some doctors criticized it for overreacting, including Jeffrey Bien, an oncologist at Stanford Medicine.
“Be careful or you’ll upset the super-secret ultra-double-long-Covid community,” Bien wrote on Twitter on April 30, according to the Daily Beast.
Bien was responding to a tweet from Vinay Prasad, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Questioning the angry attendees, he wrote: “I’m confused. If you already have COVID and have developed Covid for a long time, then what does the mask do?
Long COVID is a poorly understood condition that causes some people to continue to have some symptoms of the disease long after they first contract it — for months, years, and possibly longer.
The technical term for the syndrome is post-acute sequelae of COVID, or PASC, but doctors and researchers commonly refer to it as long COVID.
More than 16 million people have contracted Long-COVID since 2019, and it’s believed to affect between 5 and 30 percent of those who contract COVID-19, according to Stanford Medicine.
However, because the disease is not well understood or defined, it is difficult to quantify with certainty exactly how many people are affected.
Long-COVID has infected more than 16 million people since 2019 and is thought to affect between 5 and 30 percent of those who contract COVID-19. FILE PHOTO: A sick man
Symptoms generally include chronic tiredness and fatigue, brain fog, sensitivity to light, shortness of breath, stomach problems, and heart palpitations.
“I was (and still am) seriously ill and was excited to enroll in the study as it would give me the opportunity to alleviate or eliminate some of my symptoms and participate in a study of which millions of people have been affected by COVID hope. ‘ Olivia H. told the Daily Beast.
“It seems almost logical to me that long COVID patients in a long COVID study need to be protected from the virus that caused their illness in the first place.”
Although the two lead investigators involved in the Stanford clinical trial did not comment, a spokesman for Stanford Medicine said in a statement, “In accordance with the California Department of Health and Santa Clara County Public Health Services, mask wearing is required in all clinical settings no longer mandatory, but recommended.
“We continue to recommend and support masking and make masks available to healthcare workers, patients and visitors to our care facilities.”