There is an urgent need to address long-term symptoms of the coronavirus, leading U.S. public health officials said this week, warning that hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people worldwide might experience lingering problems that could impede their ability to work and function normally.

In a two-day meeting Thursday and Friday, the federal government’s first workshop dedicated to long-term COVID-19, public health officials, medical researchers and patients said the condition needed to be recognized as a syndrome, given a name and taken seriously by doctors.

"This is a phenomenon that is really quite real and quite extensive,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said at the conference Thursday.