Long covid’s lasting impact one 1 in 20 people outlined in new study

Large study provides powerful evidence of long covid’s lasting impact The Scottish study, one of the largest on long covid, found that 1 in 20 people had not recovered more than six months after infection. Frances Stead Sellers Washington Post

A new long-covid study based on the experiences of nearly 100,000 participants provides powerful evidence that many people do not fully recover months after being infected with the coronavirus.

The Scottish study found that between six and 18 months after infection, 1 in 20 people had not recovered and 42 percent reported feeling only somewhat better. There were some reassuring aspects to the results: People with asymptomatic infections are unlikely to suffer long-term effects, and vaccination appears to offer some protection from long covid.

“It’s one more well-conducted, population-level study showing that we should be extremely concerned about the current numbers of acute infections,” said David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York. “We are in trouble.”

Jill Pell, a professor of public health at the University of Glasgow who led the research, emphasized that the study revealed the wide-ranging impact of long covid on people’s lives. “There are lots of different impacts going beyond health to quality of life, employment, schooling and the ability to look after yourself,” she said.

How long covid is accelerating a revolution in medical research

The paper, published Wednesday in Nature Communications, represents the first findings of an ongoing study into long covid — the Long-CISS (Covid in Scotland Study).

The range of reported symptoms and inability to provide a prognosis for patients have perplexed long-covid researchers, even as the breadth of the challenge has become clearer. Between 7 million and 23 million Americans — including 1 million who can no longer work — are suffering from the long-term effects of infection with the virus, according to government estimates. Those numbers are expected to rise as covid becomes an endemic disease.

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