Tens of thousands of people in England may have lasting symptoms from Covid more than a year after infection, says new study.
The findings came from a sample of more than a quarter of a million people in England who self-reported their symptoms and the impact of Covid on their health and quality of life.
The research, led by scientists at Imperial College London and supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Imperial Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), found while the majority of people recovered from infection within two weeks, 7.5 percent reported persistent symptoms lasting 12 weeks or more and 5 percent reported symptoms lasting more than a year.
The most common lasting symptoms were mild fatigue, difficulty thinking or concentrating and joint pains. Loss or change of sense of smell or taste, shortness of breath, severe fatigue, chest tightness or pain, and poor memory were also reported.
People were more likely to report symptoms for a long time after initial infection if they were female, had severe initial symptoms, were infected earlier in the pandemic, or had pre‐existing health conditions.
According to the researchers, analysis also shows that people infected in the Omicron wave of the pandemic were 88 percent less likely to experience symptoms longer than four weeks post‐infection, compared to earlier waves.
Some of these symptoms were also quite often reported by people who did not have a history of COVID-19 infection.
However, mental health and health‐related quality of life were worse among participants with ongoing persistent symptoms after COVID-19 compared with those who had never had COVID-19 or who had recovered.
The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.