Dr. John Baratta, founder and medical director at UNC at Chapel Hill’s COVID Recovery Clinic, told Channel 9 the length of long COVID differs from person to person. “For some people, it is a few months. For others, it is one or a few years. And for others, I unfortunately expect it will be a lifelong condition.”

The first cases of the virus were reported about the same time the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Covid-19 crisis. On March 11, 2020, WHO declared an outbreak of the virus as a global pandemic. Local physicians, like Dr. Phil Brown, knew this unknown virus was about to spread rapidly across the Cape Fear region.