One in ten people with mild COVID-19 still has persistent symptoms such as fatigue and loss of smell EIGHT months later.
- The researchers compared some 300 health workers infected with COVID-19 with about 1,000 who had not been.
- A total of 26% of survivors had at least one symptom that lasted more than two months and 14.9% said they had symptoms that persisted after eight months.
- In the COVID-19 group, 11% said their symptoms affected their work, social, or family life, compared with 2% in the control group.
- Only between 1% and 2% of coronavirus survivors said they experienced impaired concentration or impaired memory.
A new study suggests that people who had mild cases of COVID-19 still show symptoms eight months later.
The researchers found that one in ten health care workers reported fatigue or loss of taste and smell more than 30 weeks after they removed the infection.
In addition, these moderate to severe symptoms had a negative impact on their work, social, or family life.
The team, from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, says the findings provide further evidence of the importance of vaccination.
A new study found that 26% of COVID-19 survivors had at least one symptom that lasted more than two months and 14.9% said they had symptoms that persisted after eight months. Pictured: A Department of Health employee trains New York Army National Guard soldiers to record people on iPads in New Rochelle, New York, on March 14
In COVID-19, the 11% group said their symptoms affected their work, social, or family life, compared with 2% in the control group.
For the study, published in JAMA, the team collected data from the COMMUNITY study conducted in Sweden, which analyzes immunity after coronavirus.
In the first wave, blood samples were collected from 2,149 employees at Danderyd Hospital in Stockholm between April 15 and May 8 last year.
Blood samples were taken every four months and participants answered questions about long-term symptoms and their impact on quality of life.
In a third follow-up, in January 2021, the team examined 323 health workers who had had mild COVID-19 at least eight months earlier and compared them with 1,072 employees who had not had the disease so far.
The results showed that 26 percent of those who had tested positive in the past had at least one symptom that lasted more than two months compared to the nine percent of the control group.
A total of 21.4 percent said symptoms still persisted after four months and 14.9 percent said symptoms persisted after eight months.
The most common long-term symptom was loss of smell, experienced by 14.6 percent at least two months later and by nine percent eight months later.
Completing the first three long-lasting symptoms were fatigue and loss of taste, respectively.
Eleven percent of the COVID-19 group said their symptoms affected their work, social, or family life compared to two percent of the control group.
“We investigated the presence of long-term symptoms after mild COVID-19 in a relatively young and healthy group of working individuals and found that the predominant long-term symptoms are loss of smell and taste,” has been principal investigator of the COMMUNITY study Dr. Charlotte Thålin, a specialist doctor at Danderyd Hospital and the Karolinska Institute, said in a statement.
‘Fatigue and respiratory problems are also more common among participants who have had COVID-19 but do not occur to the same extent.
Thålin noted that only one to two percent of COVID-19 survivors said they experienced impaired concentration or impaired memory.
“However, we do not see a higher prevalence of cognitive symptoms such as brain fatigue, memory and concentration problems or physical disorders such as muscle and joint pain, heart palpitations or long-term fever,” he said.