The session ‘Long COVID: Quick Response Time’ will take place on the sidelines of the 25^th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum as part of the business programme of the Healthy Life Area. Experts will discuss how to deal with post-COVID complications and patient care programmes and will present the best international practices and methods.

“Most people who have had the coronavirus infection in one form or another need to go through rehabilitation programmes and restore their body. Our job is to develop programmes that minimize the negative delayed effect of the disease and allow patients to return to their usual active healthy lifestyle as soon as possible,” Russian Federal Medical-Biological Agency First Deputy Director Tatyana Yakovleva said.

The problem of protracted forms of complications following coronavirus, better known as ‘long COVID’, not only has a medical, but also an economic aspect. As part of the rehabilitation and treatment programme for patients with post-COVID health problems, it is crucial to develop criteria for rehabilitation, create a register and introduce domestic rehabilitation equipment into practice, solve the problem of a lack of staff, and develop information technologies and motivational tools to get citizens involved in rehabilitation activities. Systematic government support is needed for scientific and medical research in studying post-COVID syndrome, which aims to identify the causes of the long-term consequences of the infection and effective therapeutic solutions that prevent severe complications.

The session participants will discuss what government resources are needed to provide the required level of assistance to patients suffering from post-COVID syndrome in all the country’s regions, what state support is needed to develop scientific and medical activities to study post-COVID syndrome, what developments in drug therapy can get us closer to solving problems associated with long COVID, as well as what medical methods and technologies are already successfully being used in Russia and around the world.

The full business programme of the Healthy Life Area is available on the website: forumhealth.ru.