Publication
An uncertain recovery: The physical toll of COVID-19 infection on liberal arts and sciences students in the Netherlands
Recent studies indicate that adolescents and young adults can also face prolonged and challenging recoveries from COVID-19. Josien de Klerk and Tennessee Miller examined the interplay between students’ illness and recovery experiences and academic work culture in this context.
- Author
- Josien de Klerk & Tennessee Miller
- Date
- 30 August 2024
- Links
- Read the full article here
Students’ narratives highlight the heterogeneity of COVID-19, both in symptoms and recovery experiences, underscoring that COVID-19 recovery among young people is not always straightforward. One-third of the students in the their study might meet the technical criteria of long COVID. However, among the students meeting these definitions, symptoms and recovery experiences and their impact on daily life vary greatly.
In this study, the authors contrasted the public health narrative of COVID-19 as an acute infection with a heterogeneity of recovery experiences amongst university students. As students were not seen as a risk group for serious complications from COVID-19 infection, university policies were geared towards containment and reopening of the university. The study shows diverse recovery experiences, with a third of those surveyed experiencing a recovery period of over one month and five students still unrecovered after three months.