Washington: According to a recent study on Covid-19, prolonged COVID infection can cause prosopagnosia in some people, commonly known as “face blindness”. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke defines face blindness as a “neurological disorder with an inability to recognize faces.”
According to this study published in the journal Cortex, some people may face facial recognition and navigation problems after covid symptoms.
The study focused on a 28-year-old woman named Annie who tested positive for covid in March 2020. Earlier, Annie had no problem recognizing faces, but two months after being exposed to the virus, she also found it difficult to recognize her close family members. On one occasion, Annie said she was unable to recognise her father’s face when she passed by at a restaurant.
“It felt like my father’s voice was coming out of a stranger’s face. She told researchers that she now relies on people’s voices for identification. Annie also experienced “navigational deficit” after the Covid infection. She said she now tries to find her way through a grocery store.
When researchers took feedback from 54 people with long Covid, they found that most of them reported problems with visual recognition and navigation abilities.
“The Annie results suggest that COVID-19 can cause serious neuropsychological problems, and it appears that high-level visual impairments are not uncommon for people with long-term COVID-19,” the researchers wrote in the study.