Long-term effects of COVID-19: impact on prescribing practice

The long-term effects of COVID-19 on health and wellbeing are unclear, and in the coming months the focus of the disease will shift from managing the outbreak to recovery, rehabilitation and optimising wellbeing of those directly or indirectly affected by COVID-19. Early research suggest its impact is both physical and psychological, and prescribers caring for people in the community will be at the forefront of supporting recovery. In this third and final roundup focusing on COVID-19, research on the long-term effects of the disease (British Thoracic Society (BTS), 2020a, 2020b) and psychological effect of lockdown will be presented (Ahmed et al, 2020). The outbreak has forced a rapid shift from face-to-face to remote consultations and the final part of this roundup will explore recent evidence relating to telehealth and e-consultation (Kruse et al, 2017; Orlando et al, 2019; Vimalananda et al, 2020).