One in 10 People Infected With Omicron Got Long Covid: Study

News Desk

Islamabad: At least one in 10 people infected with Omicron Covid-19 variant experienced the effects of long Covid in the six months following infection, a lower percentage than estimated for people infected with earlier strains of the coronavirus, says a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

The research team looked at data from 8,646 adults infected with COVID-19 at different times of the pandemic and 1,118 who did not have COVID.

“Based on a subset of 2,231 patients in this analysis who had a first Covid-19 infection on or after Dec 1, 2021, when the Omicron variant was circulating, about 10 per cent experienced long-term symptoms or long Covid after six months,” the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said.

People who were unvaccinated or got Covid before Omicron were more likely to have long-term Covid and have more severe cases, the NIH stated.

Previous studies have come up with higher figures than 10 per cent for people who have COVID.

For instance, in June 2022, one in five Americans who had Covid reported having long-term Covid. And a University of Oxford study published in September 2021 found more than a third of patients had long-lasting Covid symptoms, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

NIH informed that the scientists in the most recent study identified 12 symptoms that distinguished people who did and didn’t have Covid. The scientists developed a scoring system for the symptoms to set a threshold to identify people who had long-standing COVID.

The symptoms were fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, stomach upset, heart palpitations, issues with sexual desire or capacity, loss of smell or taste, thirst, chronic coughing, chest pain, and abnormal movements. Another symptom was post-exertional malaise, or worse symptoms after mental or physical exertion.

Scientists still have many questions about long-term COVID, such as how many people get it and why some people get it and others don’t.

The study was coordinated through the NIH’s RECOVER (Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery) initiative, which aims to find out how to define, detect, and treat long-term COVID.

“The researchers hope this study is the next step towards potential treatments for long-term COVID which affects the health and wellbeing of millions of Americans,” NIH further stated.