I'm really worried about my 67-year-old mom, who used to smoke back in her teens but quit ages ago. She had a tough bout with Covid pneumonia in December 2020 and thankfully recovered. Still, a CT scan afterward showed some scattered ground glass opacities in her upper right lung, but they didn't give her any treatment then. She had this dry cough hanging around for over a year, but nothing serious came of it until we did another CT scan after a year and a couple of months. This scan showed a soft tissue mass around 3 cm in her upper right lung with surrounding interlobular septal thickening, ground glass opacities, and bronchiectatic changes. A PET scan said it's metabolically active, and a biopsy showed it's small cell carcinoma. They've started treatment now. I'm just trying to understand, could the post-Covid fibrosis and ground glass opacities have caused this small cell carcinoma? It's really concerning since the lung mass was found surrounded by those ground glass opacities. Any insights would really help me.

no covid doesn't cause small cell carcinoma