For Utahns whose lives have been turned upside down, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services announced new discoveries it’s made regarding Long COVID.
“I’m never gonna get better, and I don’t hope to get better, but I do know that life can still be beautiful,” said Blake Bockholt, who suffers from Long COVID years after the pandemic.
Bockholt doesn’t recognize himself in pictures from just several years ago, adding that he’s a completely different person than the one who used to trail run and canyoneer, even running half-marathons every weekend.
He was diagnosed with COVID-19 in January 2022 and suffered only mild symptoms until a few weeks later when his health took a turn for the worse.
“I wasn’t doing anything, but I kept losing my breath at night,” he explained. “I couldn’t fall asleep because … I couldn’t breathe, and that’s when we started getting worried.”
Bockholt isn’t the only Utahn struggling with Long COVID, with new research showing that one in 12 state residents suffer from the same diagnosis. The majority of those are middle-aged women and people of color.