Question: I am curious about/ fearful of long covid. What percentage of people get long covid? What are the most common symptoms of long covid? Are there any conditions or scenarios that make one more likely to experience long covid?
Answer: Long COVID– a constellation of symptoms following recovery from initial infection, including brain fog, muscle pain, fatigue, and loss of taste and smell– afflicts with varying degrees of intensity (mild to life-altering) a substantial proportion of people.
- Prevalence. Prevalence estimates vary dramatically due to differences in study population, study design, symptom definitions, and more. Generally, scientists estimate that about 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 people continue to experience symptoms 12 weeks after infection, which is significantly higher than long-term symptoms after influenza (note: you’ll often hear folks say 10%-30%, which is good shorthand based on various estimates). When it comes to life-altering, debilitating symptoms, the proportions are (thankfully) much lower; according to a synthesis from UK’s Office of National Statistics, “estimates at 12 weeks post infection ranged from 1.2% of 20 year old cases to 4.8% of 60 year old cases.”
- Symptoms. Many symptoms of long covid have been reported, an overview of which can be seen in Figure 1. The most common symptoms of long-COVID according to a recent study of nearly 275K survivors are: abnormal breathing (19% in the 1- to 180-day period; 8% in the 90- to180-day period), fatigue/malaise (13%; 6%), chest/throat pain (13%; 6%), headache (9%; 5%), other pain (12%; 8%), abdominal symptoms (16%; 8%), myalgia (3%; 2%), cognitive symptoms (8%; 4%), and anxiety/depression (23%; 15%).
- Risk factors. Turning to risk, recent data indicate that vaccination can reduce the risk of long-COVID (perhaps halving the risk), but vaccination does not remove the risk entirely. Other studies have found several background characteristics associated with increased risk of long-COVID, including “increasing age, female sex, overweight/obesity, pre-existing asthma, and pre-pandemic poor physical and mental health.” Those hospitalized with COVID have also been found to be at increased risk of long-COVID.
- Omicron. We don’t have data on the risk of long-COVID from Omicron. On this front, Dr. Fauci recently made the statement ” “Long COVID can happen no matter what virus variant occurs. There’s no evidence that there’s any difference between delta or beta or now omicron.”
Figure 1. Multi-organ complications of covid-19 and long covid. (from BMJ)
