Long Covid, a loosely defined set of conditions that people report after having caught Covid-19, is yet to be properly understood, either for the biology involved or its estimated prevalence.
One in eight people who have had Covid-19 have problems such as breathlessness and general tiredness 90 to 150 days after their coronavirus infection, a new study set to be published in the The Lancet journal early on Friday said, providing what may be the most reliable estimates of Long Covid prevalence yet.
Long Covid, a loosely defined set of conditions that people report after having caught Covid-19, is yet to be properly understood, either for the biology involved or its estimated prevalence.
The new study from The Netherlands seems to answer at least the second question. Participants were asked to report symptoms of what they were feeling regularly from early on in the pandemic, giving researchers the ability to determine how commonly certain conditions are present in people who weren’t infected and in those who were.
This allowed identification of what may be the core symptoms of Long Covid: chest pain, difficulties breathing, pain when breathing, painful muscles, loss of taste and smell, tingling extremities, lump in throat, feeling hot and cold, heavy arms and/or legs, and general tiredness. “There is urgent need for data informing the scale and scope of the long-term symptoms experienced by some patients after Covid,” said Judith Rosmalen from the University of Groningen, lead author of the study, in a release.
