Survey shows high long-COVID burden among US adults

A population-based survey of US adults who previously reported having COVID-19 showed a high burden of long COVID, with some reporting symptoms more than 12 months after their initial infection.

“Most studies of long COVID are on selected samples of people, such as people hospitalized with COVID or people who seek health care for COVID long COVID symptoms or symptoms, but no studies have attempted to determine what the real burden of the long COVID is in the general population, Denis Nash, PhD, MPH, executive director of the City University of New York (CUNY) Institute for Population Health Implementation Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the CUNY School of Public Health, Healio told Healio.

“More than 2 years into the pandemic, after most people in the United States have had COVID at least once, we wanted to assess how many people had persistent symptoms and assess risk factors for having a long COVID in the general US adult population,” Nash says.

Nash and colleagues conducted a population-based survey of a random sample of 3,042 American adults aged 18 or older between June 30, 2022 and July 2, 2022. The survey used questions developed by the UK Office of National Statistics. to update long UK COVID estimates weekly.

According to the study, the survey began asking respondents if they had COVID-19 on June 5, 2022, diagnosed either by a healthcare or screening provider or by a rapid home test. If so, respondents were then asked if they thought they had long COVID, defined as symptoms such as fatigue, difficulty concentrating, shortness of breath more than 4 weeks after diagnosis that cannot be explained by anything else.

This was then followed by questions regarding the impact on daily activities, as well as any possible comorbidities that could increase the severity of COVID-19, such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, lung disease, heart disease. liver, heart disease, high blood pressure. blood pressure, recent organ transplant, or immunodeficiency.

The survey showed that approximately 7.3% (95% CI, 6.1-8.5%) of all respondents reported long COVID, which translates to approximately 18,828,696 adults.

According to the study, 25.3% of respondents with long-term COVID said their daily activities were “a lot” affected (95% CI, 18.2-32.4%), although 28.9% have had SARS-CoV-2 infection more than 12 months after the survey.

The researchers found that the prevalence of long COVID was higher among respondents who were female (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR] = 1.84; 95% CI, 1.4-2.42), those who had comorbidities (aPR = 1.55; 95% CI, 1.19-2) or those who did not receive a booster (aPR = 1, 67; 1.19-2.34) or who were not vaccinated at all (aPR = 1.41; 95% CI, 1.05-1.91).

Nash explained that the study gave an estimate of the long burden of COVID in the US higher than that of the UK 2 million (2.8%) of the total UK population aged 2 or over despite similar rates of COVID-19 transmission reported in both countries.

Denis Nash, PhD, MPH

“This suggests that we could be doing a better job of preventing long COVID,” he said. “Long COVID can be avoided by preventing more infections. But it is also increasingly clear that vaccination and especially being up to date on vaccines reduces the risk of long COVID. Yet, well whether it’s a major public health issue, we don’t have a lot of long-COVID prevention messaging (e.g., as an important reason to be up-to-date on vaccines).

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