Wuhan long Covid study gives rare insight into pandemic’s lingering effects in China

Name: What is a Covid-19 booster shot? And who should get it?
Uploaded: 2021-11-25T10:00:16.000Z
Duration: 3 min 51 s
Description: What is a Covid-19 booster shot? And who should get it?

Many patients found to suffer sleep issues, shortness of breath, fatigue and joint pain almost a year after infection, despite never having serious symptoms

Persistent symptoms in recovered Covid-19 patients have become a global public health concern

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Covid-19 patients rest in wards at a makeshift hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, in February 2020. Many of those who suffered only mild cases are now reporting breathing difficulties and other symptoms. Photo: EPA-EFE

Zhuang Pinghui

Published: 6:00pm, 25 Nov 2021

Nearly one-third of patients who suffered only mild Covid-19 still had symptoms like shortness of breath, fatigue and joint pain a year after infection, a study in Wuhan has found.

Although the study was small, involving just 120 patients, it offers a rare glimpse into the long-term health of survivors of Covid-19 in China, especially those who were not severely ill.

China, where Covid-19 was first identified, has yet to publish any large-scale data on patients suffering lingering symptoms. A study published in The Lancet medical journal in August of about 1,200 patients at the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital – which admitted mostly severely ill patients during the outbreak – found nearly half still had symptoms a year after they first became ill.

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What is a Covid-19 booster shot? And who should get it?

A paper published in Chinese peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Medicine on Tuesday reported findings from 120 patients admitted to the Wuhan Union Hospital west district and Fangcang shelter hospitals between January 29 and April 1 last year. They had their post-infection health status evaluated after about 314.5 days, according to researchers from the Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, who published the findings.

The study found sleep difficulties, shortness of breath, fatigue and joint pain were commonly observed during follow-up and nearly one-third of “non-severe” patients – 86.7 per cent of the total – had these symptoms.

More than 56 per cent of the patients who originally had symptoms that were not severe still showed abnormal findings in their CT scan nearly one year after infection, including ground-glass opacities, bronchiectasis, nodules and fibrosis.

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