Factors Related to Long Covid-19 in Older Persons
Keywords:
Long COVID-19, Older person, Factors relatedAbstract
Purpose: To study the relationships among age, gender, obesity, smoking, congenital diseases, history of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine before infection, severity of COVID-19 infection symptoms, treatment received during hospitalization, stress, physical activity, and long COVID-19 in older persons.
Design: A descriptive correlational research design was employed.
Methods: The sample consisted of 87 people over 60 years of age, both males and females, who have a history of being infected with coronavirus 2019 for at least 4 weeks or more and had been treated as outpatients, inpatients, or in a special COVID-19 ward (Hospitel) at Rajavithi Hospital, Police General Hospital, and King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital. The research instruments included 1) The Demographic Patients’ data, 2) Perceived Stress Scale-10, 3) Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ) version 2, 4) Long COVID-19 Symptoms in Older Persons Questionnaire. The instruments have quality in both content validity and reliability. Data were analyzed using Eta coefficient, Spearman’s rank, and Pearson’s Product Moment correlation.
Results: 1) The top 10 most common long COVID-19 symptoms in older persons were fatigue/tiredness, coughing, insomnia, having sputum, sore throat, muscle pain, running nose, dyspnea, joint pain, and back pain. 2). Factors significantly related to long COVID-19 in older persons at the level of .05 include obesity (rp = .69), gender ( = .31), stress (rp = .33), congenital disease ( = .23), age (rs = -.23), and history of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine before infection (rp = -.16). Smoking, severity of COVID-19 infection symptoms, treatment received during hospitalization, and physical activity were not correlated.
Conclusion: The results are useful for the further development of nursing intervention programs in older persons infected with coronavirus 2019 to reduce the factors long COVID-19
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