Ongoing symptoms of COVID-19 or the impact of living through a pandemic can impact people's ability to undertake normal activities of living or their usual job role. Such individuals may also find it more difficult to eat well.
Symptoms:
- Low work productivity
- Inability to undertake normal activities of daily living
- Mobility and self care issues
- Food poverty
What does it have to do with the patient’s nutrition and diet?
- Not meeting protein and vitamin requirements may trigger feeling tired at work
- Working patterns have been reported to be impaired by Long Covid and people were reported to have financial constraints (NIHR, 2021). Limiting daily living activities can impact access to nutritious food which can decrease variety in a patient’s diet, preventing them from receiving all nutrients and calories they are used to
- In the US, ethnic minorities are widely affected by COVID-19. Groups such as the elderly or ill are less likely to have access to fresh foods, due to not having availability or ability to obtain transportation to grocery stores. Urban occupants, especially, may live in food deserts where their geographic distance from farms or gardens with fresh harvests limits them from accessing healthy and nutritional foods (Polamarasetti and Martirosyan, 2020)
- Findings from the ZOE App (Merino et al., 2021) suggest that high diet quality is associated with lower risk of COVID-19 and severe COVID-19. This relationship seems more pronounced in communities with higher socioeconomic deprivation
Useful links to address some of these symptoms
- People could be encouraged to use online shopping to ensure that they are able to source an appropriate food supply and many websites offer recipe suggestions which may help to stimulate appetite in those who have lost theirs
- Various useful recommendations can help to increase adequate availability of a healthy diet during a pandemic (page 8-9) (Polamarasetti and Martirosyan, 2020).
- First-line advice and further advice
- Assessing nutritional needs and setting realistic goals
- Monitoring patients during their COVID-19 recovery