The Wider Image: The faces in the fog of 'long COVID'
A combination picture shows long COVID sufferer Amaia Artica, 42, posing for a photograph taken through blue plastic, and a thermometer belonging to Artica photographed through blue plastic, in Pamplona, Spain, March 16, 2021. The photographs were taken through blue plastic to visualise the effects of long COVID. Permanent fatigue, daily fever, muscle and joint pain, insomnia and constant mental lapses have kept Artica from doing the job she loves at a nursery school since she got infected with coronavirus during the first wave of the disease. Her brain fogginess is so acute that there are days she finds herself staring at a blank wall, feeling "out of it". Loss for words, inability to remember how to do simple tasks and overall forgetfulness have become part of her life. Artica suffers from daily low-grade fever. "My family doctor has been very supportive of me throughout this ordeal, but not all doctors have been that understanding. A specialist doctor told me to stop taking my temperature, that if I didn't pay attention to it, it would go away because it was all in my head." REUTERS/Susana Vera SEARCH "SPAIN LONGCOVID" FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH "WIDER IMAGE" FOR ALL STORIES
