Apr 2020 | Dr. Elisa Perego, @elisaperego78 | Twitter
The hashtag #LongCOVID is used for the first time on Twitter
Researcher and Long COVID activist Elisa Perego posted a tweet containing the term "Long COVID" for the first time under the hashtag #LongCOVID. In that tweet, she describes her own experience of the disease. The term quickly gained momentum and was used by various bodies, including the World Health Organisation, to describe the long-term impact of COVID-19.
Just a few months later, in October 2020, she explained in a blog post published with other researchers in the British Medical Journal why she believes the term "Long COVID", coined by those affected, should be adopted into common usage.
Dr. Elisa Perego, @elisaperego78
Dr Elisa Perego is a researcher and advocate for the Long COVID movement, specialising in disability, health and inequality in contemporary and past society. She herself suffers from Long COVID and has been dealing with it personally, as well as professionally and publicly. Perego has conducted several research and scholarly communication projects on COVID-19 and Long COVID, writing some of the first publications on Long COVID and the emergence of the Long COVID movement. She is also involved with the Long COVID movement as a policy advocate.
Twitter is a microblogging service provided by X Corp (formerly Twitter Inc). On Twitter, registered users can distribute texts of up to 280 characters as well as pictures and videos. The messages are called "tweets", derived from the English verb "to tweet".