Tweet Facebook Mail For most people, catching the common cold or another respiratory illness means a week or so of feeling sick. For Phoebe, 19, who was diagnosed with long COVID in 2022 after contracting the virus twice, face masks are one of the only things preventing a potentially debilitating infection that could set her back months in her recovery. "I try to wear it as much as possible when I'm on trains in the morning, when everyone is coughing and everyone's in close proximity," she says, mentioning her "hard hitting" pneumonia infection recently.
READ MORE: Reason for British tech giant's doomed luxury yacht trip revealed Mask mandates on public transport lifted in most Australian states in September of 2022. (Getty) "Some days I think I've recovered [from long COVID] really well," she adds. "But a lot of the time, I'm not really moving.
I don't really go out. As a 19-year-old it's really so difficult, especially when you're first starting uni." Long COVID, which affects one in five Australians , describes several medical symptoms that linger or appear after a COVID infection, including tiredness and fatigue, "brain fog", sleep problems, coughing, and shortness of breath.
A recent report by the Medical Journal of Australia projected that the 30-39-year-old age group followed by 20-29-year-olds would constitute the majority of long COVID cases among the Australian population by October this year. Clodagh, 30, who is also recovering from long COVID, says that there is ".