Questões de Inglês - Reading/Writing

T E X T

Nearly Half of Covid Patients Haven’t Fully Recovered Months Later, Study Finds

    A study of tens of thousands of people in
Scotland found that one in 20 people who had been sick
with Covid reported not recovering at all, and another
four in 10 said they had not fully recovered from their
[5] infections many months later.
    The authors of the study, published in the journal
Nature Communications, tried to home in on the longterm risks of Covid by comparing the frequency of
symptoms in people with and without previous Covid
[10] diagnoses.
    People with previous symptomatic Covid
infections reported certain persistent symptoms, such
as breathlessness, palpitations and confusion or
difficulty concentrating, at a rate roughly three times as
[15] high as uninfected people in surveys from six to 18
months later, the study found. Those patients also
experienced elevated risks of more than 20 other
symptoms relating to the heart, respiratory health,
muscle aches, mental health and the sensory system.
[20]     The findings strengthened calls from scientists
for more expansive care options for long Covid patients
in the United States and elsewhere, while also offering
some good news.
    The study did not identify greater risks of long

[25] term problems in people with asymptomatic
coronavirus infections. It also found, in a much more
limited subset of participants who had been given at
least one dose of Covid vaccine before their infections,
that vaccination appeared to help reduce if not
[30] eliminate the risk of some long Covid symptoms.
    People with severe initial Covid cases were at
higher risk of long-term problems, the study found. “The
beauty of this study is they have a control group, and
they can isolate the proportion of symptomatology that
[35] is attributable to Covid infection,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly,
chief of research at the V.A. St. Louis Health Care System
and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in
St. Louis, who was not involved in the research. “It also
tracks with the broader idea that long Covid is truly a
[40] multisystem disorder,” Dr. Al-Aly said, one that resides
“not only in the brain, not only in the heart — it’s all of
the above.”
    Jill Pell, a professor of public health at the
University of Glasgow who led the research, said the

[45] findings reinforced the importance of long Covid
patients being offered support that extends beyond
health care and also addresses needs related to jobs,
education, poverty and disability. “It told us that Covid
can appear differently in different individuals, and it can
[50] have more than one impact on your life,” Dr. Pell said.
“Any approach to supporting people has to be, firstly,
personalized and also holistic. The answer doesn’t just
lie within the health care sector.
    Long Covid refers to a constellation of problems
[55] that can plague patients for months or longer after an
infection. Over the last year, researchers have given
more attention to understanding the daunting
aftereffects as the number of Covid cases exploded and
health systems learned to better manage the initial
[60] stages of an infection. U.S. government estimates have
indicated that between 7.7 million and 23 million people
in the United States could have long Covid.
    Globally, “the condition is devastating people’s
lives and livelihoods,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
[65] the director general of the World Health Organization,
wrote in an article for The Guardian. He called on all
countries to devote “immediate and sustained action
equivalent to its scale.”
    The authors of the study in Scotland tracked
[70] 33,000 people who had tested positive for the virus
starting in April 2020 and 63,000 who had never been
diagnosed with Covid. In six-month intervals, those
people were asked about any symptoms they had,
including tiredness, muscle aches, chest pain and
neurological problems, and about any difficulties with
[75] daily life.
    Of those with previous Covid cases, 6 percent
said on their most recent follow-up survey that they had
not recovered at all and 42 percent said that they had
[80] only partly recovered. Women, older people and those
living in poorer areas faced more serious aftereffects
from a Covid infection. So, too, did those with preexisting health problems, including respiratory disease
and depression.
[85]     Only a small portion of the study participants —
about 4 percent — had been vaccinated before their
infections, and many of those with only a single dose.
“We’re now really heavily reliant upon vaccination,” Dr.
Pell said, “which does confer some protection, but it’s
[90] not absolute.”

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/

T E X T

Nearly Half of Covid Patients Haven’t Fully Recovered Months Later, Study Finds

    A study of tens of thousands of people in
Scotland found that one in 20 people who had been sick
with Covid reported not recovering at all, and another
four in 10 said they had not fully recovered from their
[5] infections many months later.
    The authors of the study, published in the journal
Nature Communications, tried to home in on the longterm risks of Covid by comparing the frequency of
symptoms in people with and without previous Covid
[10] diagnoses.
    People with previous symptomatic Covid
infections reported certain persistent symptoms, such
as breathlessness, palpitations and confusion or
difficulty concentrating, at a rate roughly three times as
[15] high as uninfected people in surveys from six to 18
months later, the study found. Those patients also
experienced elevated risks of more than 20 other
symptoms relating to the heart, respiratory health,
muscle aches, mental health and the sensory system.
[20]     The findings strengthened calls from scientists
for more expansive care options for long Covid patients
in the United States and elsewhere, while also offering
some good news.
    The study did not identify greater risks of long

[25] term problems in people with asymptomatic
coronavirus infections. It also found, in a much more
limited subset of participants who had been given at
least one dose of Covid vaccine before their infections,
that vaccination appeared to help reduce if not
[30] eliminate the risk of some long Covid symptoms.
    People with severe initial Covid cases were at
higher risk of long-term problems, the study found. “The
beauty of this study is they have a control group, and
they can isolate the proportion of symptomatology that
[35] is attributable to Covid infection,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly,
chief of research at the V.A. St. Louis Health Care System
and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in
St. Louis, who was not involved in the research. “It also
tracks with the broader idea that long Covid is truly a
[40] multisystem disorder,” Dr. Al-Aly said, one that resides
“not only in the brain, not only in the heart — it’s all of
the above.”
    Jill Pell, a professor of public health at the
University of Glasgow who led the research, said the

[45] findings reinforced the importance of long Covid
patients being offered support that extends beyond
health care and also addresses needs related to jobs,
education, poverty and disability. “It told us that Covid
can appear differently in different individuals, and it can
[50] have more than one impact on your life,” Dr. Pell said.
“Any approach to supporting people has to be, firstly,
personalized and also holistic. The answer doesn’t just
lie within the health care sector.
    Long Covid refers to a constellation of problems
[55] that can plague patients for months or longer after an
infection. Over the last year, researchers have given
more attention to understanding the daunting
aftereffects as the number of Covid cases exploded and
health systems learned to better manage the initial
[60] stages of an infection. U.S. government estimates have
indicated that between 7.7 million and 23 million people
in the United States could have long Covid.
    Globally, “the condition is devastating people’s
lives and livelihoods,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
[65] the director general of the World Health Organization,
wrote in an article for The Guardian. He called on all
countries to devote “immediate and sustained action
equivalent to its scale.”
    The authors of the study in Scotland tracked
[70] 33,000 people who had tested positive for the virus
starting in April 2020 and 63,000 who had never been
diagnosed with Covid. In six-month intervals, those
people were asked about any symptoms they had,
including tiredness, muscle aches, chest pain and
neurological problems, and about any difficulties with
[75] daily life.
    Of those with previous Covid cases, 6 percent
said on their most recent follow-up survey that they had
not recovered at all and 42 percent said that they had
[80] only partly recovered. Women, older people and those
living in poorer areas faced more serious aftereffects
from a Covid infection. So, too, did those with preexisting health problems, including respiratory disease
and depression.
[85]     Only a small portion of the study participants —
about 4 percent — had been vaccinated before their
infections, and many of those with only a single dose.
“We’re now really heavily reliant upon vaccination,” Dr.
Pell said, “which does confer some protection, but it’s
[90] not absolute.”

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/

INSTRUCTION: Read the text to answer question.

Your brain’s roughly 86 billion interconnected neurons endow it with the ability to understand the world, plan actions, and solve problems. Doing so requires the brain to incorporate all available information. By combining information from all of your body’s senses, the brain paints a picture of the world around you. Then, using inference and instinct, the brain makes sense of the picture it assembles.

The brain both makes and uses emotions, which are value judgments that help the brain respond effectively to events. It associates the pictures it assembles with feelings to form memories. Our brains store those memories, learn from them, and use that knowledge in the future. By combining all of these tools with imagination, your brain can predict future events, calculate your next move, and devise plans for future opportunities. Consciousness requires that all of these activities function normally. In other words, your brain’s trillions of connections work together to understand the world, to think about the future, and to create … you.

Available at: https://www.brainfacts.org/the-brain-facts-book. Accessed on: Aug 20, 2021.

Read the text and answer question.

Insomnia

    Insomnia is the most common of all sleep complaints. Almost everyone has occasional sleepless nights, perhaps due to stress, heartburn or drinking too much caffeine or alcohol. Insomnia is a lack of sleep that occurs on a regular or frequent basis, often for no apparent reason.

    How much sleep is enough varies. Although 7 1/2 hours of sleep is about average, some people do fine on 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Other people need 9 or 10 hours a night.

    Inability to get a good night’s sleep can affect not only your energy level and mood but your health as well because sleep helps bolster your immune system. Fatigue, at any age, leads to diminished mental alertness and concentration. Lack of sleep is linked to accidents both on the road and on the job.

   About one out of three people have insomnia sometime in their life. Sleeplessness may be temporary or chronic. You don’t necessarily have to live with sleepless nights. Some simple changes in your daily routine and habits may result in better sleep.

htttp://www.mayoclinic.com.

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

    There is no agent of ecological imperialism more ferocious than the wild pig. Wherever Europeans invaded, from the Americas to Australia, so did their pigs, many of which escaped into the countryside to wreak havoc. The beasts tear through native plants and animals, they spread disease, they destroy crops, and they reconstruct whole ecosystems in their wake. They’re not so much pests as they are chaos embodied.

    Now add climate change to the wild pig’s résumé of destruction. In their never-ending search for food, the pigs root through soils, churning the dirt like a farmer tills fields. Scientists already knew, to some extent, that this releases the carbon that’s locked in the soil, but researchers in Australia, New Zealand, and the US have now calculated how much soil wild pigs may be disturbing worldwide. The carbon dioxide emissions that they produce annually, the authors concluded, equal that of more than a million cars.

    It’s yet another piece of an increasingly worrisome puzzle, showing how modification of the land has — in this case, inadvertently — exacerbated climate change. “Anytime you disturb soil, you’re causing emissions,” says University of Queensland ecologist Christopher O’Bryan, lead author on a new paper describing the research in the journal Global Change Biology. “When you till soil for agriculture, for example, or you have widespread land-use change — urbanization, forest loss.”

    Given their domination of whole landscapes, pigs had to be making things worse, the researchers knew, but no one had modeled it worldwide. “We started to realize there’s a big gap at the global scale looking at this question,” O’Bryan adds.

(Matt Simon. www.wired.com, 19.07.2021. Adaptado.)