Louise Eggimann, specialist in general medicine and head of operations at Torsvik's health center in Lidingö, meets a rather large group of patients who suffer from prolonged symptoms of covid-19 or suspected covid-19.  

- Many are of working age. Above all, many who have never sought medical care end up in a situation where they never recover. Symptoms fluctuate. You can feel bad and it feels better for a few days, just to come back. 

"We learn from each other" 

The Stockholm region confirms that all health centers they have asked in the region meet these patients. There are patients who do not become so ill that they need to be hospitalized, but who suffer from long-term illness.  

A brand new virus is a challenge for healthcare professionals. Especially when patients get sick in different ways and their symptoms vary. Louise Eggimann describes how she meets patients who suffer from muscular pain similar to inflammation of the retina. Others have rashes they have never seen before and someone has even lost their hearing. They are forced to learn in real time and use, among other things, Internet groups for the profession.

Louise Eggimann, specialist in general medicine is one of those who meet those who are long-term ill in covid-19 Photo: SVT Rebecka Haglund

- The medical team here, above all, and also the nurses, we sit and learn from each other: “I have had a patient who has dropped nails on his feet. But, I have, too, ”she says.

- It's so new. In a way, it's exciting: what's going on in the body, but it's like cat and rat, what does the immune system do with us? When these symptoms do not go over then you become scared and worried and that is adequate, says Eggimann.

The younger doctors are now learning things that normally take ten years 

At Torsvik's health center they have changed their way of working. Since the knowledge is still limited about how this virus behaves for this particular patient group, there are always two doctors with and meet a patient. 

- We are two doctors because it is so difficult. Preferably a little older and a younger one. And should something good come out of this, I think the younger doctors, what they have learned now, is something that takes ten years to learn otherwise, she concludes.