Explainer | Can vaccination or drugs help defeat long Covid?

Name: Understanding long Covid: why researchers are turning to gut bacteria for answers
Uploaded: 2022-06-11T08:00:17.000Z
Duration: 7 min 2 s
Description: Understanding long Covid: why researchers are turning to gut bacteria for answers

WHO evidence suggests 10-20 per cent of people experience a variety of mid and long-term effects after they recover from initial Covid-19 illness

Despite being designated a so-called milder variant, Omicron still causes long Covid, according to a British study

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There is no “gold standard” test for diagnosing long Covid and doctors must rely on the patients’ own descriptions while ruling out other possible causes. Photo: Reuters

Zhuang Pinghui

Published: 4:00pm, 11 Jun 2022

Two and half years into the pandemic, debilitating Covid-19 symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath and chest pain still haunt some people and impair their quality of life – even though their experience of the original illness was mild.

Understanding of “post-acute sequelae” of Covid-19, dubbed long Covid or long-haul Covid, remains limited but there have been some studies to improve understanding of the symptoms and whether tools such as vaccination and drugs ease them.

Here is what scientists know so far about long Covid and also what is being done to help fill the knowledge gap.

How common are lingering Covid-19 symptoms?

According to the World Health Organization, evidence suggests about 10 to 20 per cent of people experience a variety of mid and long-term effects after they recover from their initial Covid-19 illness.

A study released in November involving about 4.5 million people treated at US Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals found that 7 per cent of Covid-19 patients still reported symptoms 30 days after the first onset of illness.

The burden is heavier among those admitted to hospital – 21.7 per cent of patients admitted to hospital and 36.5 per cent of patients admitted to intensive care reported these lingering symptoms. The figure dropped to 4.4 per cent for people who were not admitted to hospital when first infected.

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Understanding long Covid: why researchers are turning to gut bacteria for answers

A report by the British Office for National Statistics (ONS) last month estimated 2 million people, or about 3 per cent of the population, self-reported having long Covid in the four weeks after their infection, based on a representative sample survey of people living in private households.