Addressing standardized definitions of post-COVID and long-COVID

There is still large confusion and open debate as to what should be defined as a “pathological continuum of symptoms after recovering from an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection”, including confusion over appropriate terminology, such as differentiating between “post-COVID” and “long-COVID”. We are hence providing here a tentative (operative) definition, where we suggest to define “post-COVID” as continuation of signs, symptoms or even radiologic/laboratory abnormalities of an initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, irrespective of their duration, whilst we prefer to reserve the definition of “long-COVID” to those people with persistence of signs, symptoms or even radiologic/laboratory abnormalities of an initial SARS-CoV-2 infection for more than 3 months. We hope that these definitions could help harmonize the classification of patients with any type of post-COVID condition for both clinical and research purposes.