Scientists are studying the similarities between long Covid and ongoing symptoms experienced by survivors of Ebola and Chikungunya virus in the hope of devising new treatments to improve their health.

Like patients with long Covid, survivors of these other, relatively new human viruses, often experience lingering symptoms which can make it difficult to work or function in everyday life.



For Ebola, roughly three-quarters of survivors are still experiencing symptoms a year after the initial infection, and sometimes for much longer – including joint and muscle pain, migraine-like headaches, visual problems and fatigue.

It’s a similar story for Chikungunya, a mosquito-transmitted virus that mostly affects people in African and Asian countries, causing fever and debilitating joint pain. Around a third of people go on to develop crippling arthritis that can last years, or other symptoms such as fatigue.

“It’s the same kind of discussions as we’re having for Covid; it’s people whose lives have never been the same again, who describe joint pain and fatigue and cognitive problems and all those familiar lists,” said Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London.

“The experience of Chikungunya and Ebola should be sounding alarm bells, because although we’re talking about very different virus families, and very diverse infections, they seem to do quite similar things. There’s a desperate need for some immunology to understand what’s going on,” he said.

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