Long COVID: a new disease?

The definition of quaternary prevention as the set of interventions that avoids or mitigates the consequences of unnecessary or excessive activity of medical interventionism and the health system. The definition of a new disease is a complex process that involves the identification, characterization and description of a medical condition that has not been previously recognized or documented. Since mid-2020, the term chronic COVID/long COVID has been used to describe the presence of signs and symptoms after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, with multiple terminologies and definitions in international literature. Post-infectious syndromes, myalgia encephalomyelitis and fibromyalgia, are some of the diseases that have similarities with chronic COVID. This article presents an analysis relating the concepts of new disease and quaternary prevention with chronic COVID and other diseases described in the literature.