Dr. John Lambert:

The interesting thing is early on, patients even with normal chest X-rays and no lung abnormalities and pulmonary function tests continue to have this air hunger or breathing problems. The breathing centre is in the part of the brain that is affected by long Covid. The Deputy will have heard of sleep apnoea, which comes from the brain. The focus is really on the brain. I have talked to a lot of my pulmonary specialists at the Mater and initially every patient with this shortness of breath and symptoms like that was being sent for pulmonary function tests and being put on breathing treatments to support them but they do not have asthma. They have got a centrally-driven kind of air hunger. It is not like asthma at all. An awful lot of patients are out there with these breathing problems and they are not coming from the lungs. Many of the cardiac problems are not coming from the lungs but from the brain, the vagus nerves and the inflammation from the brain is stimulating so we need to get-----