The Canadian Respiratory Research Network Long COVID-19 Study

Preliminary studies suggest that COVID-19 causes long-term lung damage, even in young, otherwise healthy people who did not need to go to hospital or the ICU. We seek to know how common long-term lung damage after COVID-19 is, who is most affected by it and what the effects of this damage are on other important aspects of people's lives. We plan to study a large sample of people with a history of COVID-19 infection from across Canada-some who needed hospitalization but most who did not. Through online questionnaires, we will determine their respiratory symptoms, quality of life and medical history. Then we will invite them to one of our thirteen Canadian testing centres to have special, thorough breathing tests. We hypothesize that COVID-19 leaves a significant proportion of people with measurable respiratory impairment. The information we learn about the effect of COVID-19 on the lungs will help patients and health care providers manage it better. It will also reveal how different COVID-19 variants affect the lungs. We will use this new knowledge to write a formal guide on what respiratory monitoring and testing should be done after COVID-19 infection. This will ensure that people affected by COVID-19 get the care they need to maintain their lung health.