In addition to protecting against serious illness and death from COVID-19, vaccines also protect against long-term Covid, a new study suggests.
Scientists in the UK found that fully vaccinated Britons who suffered advanced cases were close to half the chances of reporting long-term symptoms of Covid than those who were not infected.
In addition, the researchers found that only 0.2 percent of the fully vaccinated patients studied tested positive for Covid, demonstrating the ability of vaccines to prevent infection.
The study was based on self-reported symptoms of a Covid monitoring application and more research is needed to support these findings.
But Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), described the study as “encouraging” in a commentary article on Tuesday.
According to a new study, vaccination protects against long covid in addition to serious diseases. In the photo: a Pittsburgh resident is vaccinated at a clinic run by the Allegheny County Department of Health, September 2021
The researchers found that fully vaccinated patients who received Covid were about half as likely to have long-term symptoms (for more than 28 days) than unvaccinated patients.
Covid vaccines currently available in the US have been shown to be highly effective in protecting people from serious illness and death.
Of the more than 176 million Americans who had been completely vaccinated against Covid in early September, only 14,000 had a blunt infection that led to hospitalization or death.
To a lesser degree, Covid vaccines also protect receptors against simple Covid infection and transmission of the virus to others.
But for many clinicians and patients, long Covid (the condition in which patients suffer from Covid symptoms for weeks or months after infection) has been an unanswered question.
A study of health workers in Israel revealed that Covid is long possible after an advanced infection.
Israeli researchers found that one in five advanced cases resulted in a long Covid, but it was a small study, which included only 39 advanced cases in total.
A new UK study similarly shows that long Covid is possible after an advanced infection, although the risk of long-term symptoms is much lower for vaccinated patients than for unvaccinated ones.
The study was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases in early September.
For this study, researchers at King’s College London used data from the COVID Symptom Study app, a free mobile app developed by healthcare company ZOE.
This app allows Britons to keep track of their Covid symptoms on a daily basis, while recording test results, vaccination status and other health information.
More than 1.2 million application users reported getting vaccinated between December 2020 (when vaccines became available in the UK) and July 2021.
Of those 1.2 million, the researchers found that about 6,000 tested positive for Covid two weeks after the first dose of vaccine (but before the second).
A smaller number, about 2,400, tested positive at least a week after his second shot.
In other words, only 0.2 percent of fully vaccinated people subsequently had a Covid infection, which demonstrates how well the vaccines work.
App users who had advanced cases were less likely to report almost all of Covid’s main symptoms, with fully vaccinated users reporting milder cases than partially vaccinated users.
The researchers compared these application users who had advanced cases with both vaccinated users who did not test positive for Covid and non-vaccinated users who had non-advanced infections.
Comparing advanced and non-advanced cases, the researchers found that Covid used to be a smoother experience for those who had received the shots.
“Almost all symptoms were reported less frequently in infected vaccinated individuals than in unvaccinated infected individuals,” the researchers wrote in their article.
These common symptoms include loss of smell, cough, fever, headache, and fatigue.
They also noted that vaccinated individuals were more likely to have an asymptomatic case, while unvaccinated patients were more likely to require hospitalization.
Vaccinated people who suffered from advanced cases were also less likely to show signs of long Covid, which the researchers defined as symptoms for 28 days or more.
Specifically, fully vaccinated individuals presenting with advanced cases were about half as likely as unvaccinated individuals to report long-term symptoms.
This reduced risk of long-term Covid after an advanced case is included with the overall risk of contracting Covid after vaccination.
Researchers in the UK also analyzed the demographic factors of the advanced case group.
They found that older adults were more likely to have an advanced case than younger adults.
Older adults themselves were at higher risk if they had other vulnerable conditions.
Also at risk: people living in low-income areas and people who are obese.
This study is based on health information that patients report about themselves, which means that conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt.
The researchers noted that users of the COVID Symptom Study app in their analysis tended to be women and living in high-income areas, potentially skewing the results.
Still, NIH director Collins said the findings “offer encouraging news” in comments from the NIH director’s blog.
“These latest findings offer the encouraging news that there is already help in the form of vaccines, which offer a very effective way to protect against COVID-19 and greatly reduce the chances of long-term COVID if you get sick,” he said. write.
To further study the long Covid, including post-vaccination risks, the NIH has launched the RECOVER initiative, which will study tens of thousands of Covid survivors.
This initiative was announced in February 2021 and began awarding grants to researchers this summer.
