Long-term symptoms of Covid will resolve within a year for this group of people

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A new study finds that people with long-term Covid who initially experienced a mild episode of the virus should expect their symptoms to go away within a year.

Some patients who experience persistent effects after illness worry that chronic symptoms will not go away, but academics say that “mild illness does not lead to serious or long-term chronic morbidity.”

The researchers compared data from people who did not contract the virus with people who had a mild form of the disease – meaning they were sick but did not need hospital care.

They also examined information about persistent symptoms after infection – both among vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

The Israeli team of researchers also looked at information about nearly two million people registered with a healthcare provider in Israel who had a Covid-19 test between March 2020 and October 2021.

Data on nearly 300,000 people who had a confirmed mild case of Covid was compared with the same number of people who did not test positive for the disease.

The researchers looked at information on a number of symptoms associated with prolonged Covid, including loss of taste and smell, problems with breathing, concentration, and memory problems — also known as brain fog. Weakness, palpitations, and dizziness, among others.

They found that symptoms of long-term Covid “remained for several months” but mostly resolved within a year.

They also discovered that the risk of “persistent” breathing problems was more common among people who did not receive a Covid-19 shot than among those who did.

“Although long Covid was feared and discussed from the start of the pandemic, we have observed that most emerging health outcomes after a mild disease course remained for several months and returned to normal within the first year,” the academics wrote at The BMJ. .

This nationwide data set of patients with mild Covid-19 indicates that mild illness does not lead to serious or long-term chronic morbidity and adds a small ongoing burden to healthcare providers.

“Importantly, the risk of persistent dyspnea was reduced in vaccinated patients with penetrating infection compared with unvaccinated subjects, while the risks of all other outcomes were comparable.”

They said the greatest number of long-term symptoms lasting at least six months was found among those between the ages of 41 and 60 compared to other age groups.

The children had an “increased risk for a small number of outcomes during the early stage” which returned to normal at a later time.

The researchers also found no difference in the course of long-term Covid disease based on which strain of virus a patient is likely to contract — including the original strain, alpha and delta variants.

But they added more work on long Covid cases of the Omicron variant that should help clarify whether different variants carry different levels of long Covid risk.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that at the start of December last year, an estimated 2.1 million people in the UK had self-reported long-term COVID-19.

Of this group, 57 percent reported that their symptoms had lasted for at least a year, and about 645,000 said they were first infected two years ago.

According to ONS data, fatigue is the most commonly reported symptom, followed by difficulty concentrating, shortness of breath, and muscle aches.

Long Covid is defined as symptoms that persist for more than four weeks after infection.

With additional reporting from the PA

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