Having Covid for over 12 weeks linked to face blindness: study

A persisting Covid-19 infection that lasts over 12 weeks has been linked to a neurological condition called face blindness.

A new study has found that some people who endured the virus infection for more than three months developed prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness. It is a disorder characterised by the inability to recognise faces. Some individuals also developed difficulty with navigation.

The study suggests that Covid-19 can produce severe and selective neuropsychological impairment which is similar to what is seen following a brain injury. Findings published in the journal Cortex followed a study on a 28-year-old woman Annie.

She contracted the virus in March 2020 and was sick for two months. She later struggled to identify even her closest family members. Describing the experience of running into her father at a restaurant, she said it was as if her father's voice came out of a stranger's face. She now relies on voice recognition to identify people. She also developed navigation deficits which means she even struggles to find her way through a grocery store and locate her parked car.

Researchers studied 54 people with long Covid and found that a majority of them developed problems with visual recognition and navigation.