COVID Long-Hauler From Minnesota Says Vaccine Helped Immediately

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minneapolis woman who was sick from COVID-19 for more than a year has said she’s all better now after getting the vaccine.

Melissa Gerads Jones told KARE she “had pains, chest congestion” and “wheezing” in her chest and throat for nearly 400 days after testing positive for the coronavirus in March 2020.

“All I could think of was, I can’t live the rest of my life like this,” she said.

She said getting the vaccine saved her life.

Two weeks after getting her final shot, Gerads Jones said she could “think clearly.”

“I have energy again,” she told KARE.

Gerads Jones is known as a COVID-19 “long-hauler,” people whose virus symptoms linger for weeks or even months after they test positive. Experts are still searching for a full explanation of the long-hauler phenomenon, as many times the lingering symptoms are unexplainable and random, according to a WHYY report from June on the subject.

Yale Medicine is among the health institutions with people investigating the impact the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have on long-hauler patients. Patch has reached out to a Yale physician for an update on their research.

Gerads Jones isn’t the only long-hauler who has said the vaccine helped immensely, but WHYY reported many others don’t experience any changes after the inoculation.

For Gerads Jones, it was exactly what was needed.

“If that shot had been available (in March 2020) and could keep me from getting what I went through, you’re darn straight I would have gotten it right away.”