While this is not legislative news, it is important to let you know that a new study out of Scotland found that about 48 percent of people who had covid still hadn’t fully recovered from the virus after 18 months and are considered to have long covid.
About 6 percent reported not recovering at all since getting sick, the researchers found in analyzing 30,000 patients with confirmed covid infections. The study also considered people without confirmed Covid-19 cases to better understand which symptoms were associated with covid alone.
Symptomatic infection was associated with symptoms like breathlessness, palpitations, chest pain and confusion. Symptomless infection was not associated with any adverse effects during the study.
The study also supported the benefit of vaccines: They were associated with a reduced risk of several symptoms.
It is the latest in a growing body of research trying to grasp the causes of and possible cures for long covid, though several studies are focused on properly defining long covid.
The true extent to which the syndrome has affected populations is unknown. The U.S. Government Accountability Office said the number of Americans affected “could be in the range of 7.7–23 million.” Some earlier studies estimated around 30 percent of those infected with Covid-19 would develop long covid.
In addition, Covid-19 cases are rising again in pockets of the world, in part because the hyper-contagious omicron strain is splintering into many subvariants. Some of them show a striking ability to evade antibodies. And while long covid affects millions of people, it largely eases with time.
