Successive doses of COVID vaccine can further reduce the risk, experts say

Shishira Sreenivas, November 24, 2023, The Messenger

Getting at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine before your first bout of infection can significantly cut the risk of developing long COVID, according to a new study. 

Researchers from Sweden, who published findings Wednesday on The BMJ, analyzed data from over half a million Swedes aged 18 and over, who registered their first COVID infection between December 2020 and February 2022. 

Unvaccinated individuals, the study found, were almost four times more likely to be diagnosed with long covid than those who were vaccinated before their first COVID infection.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, long covid, also known as post-COVID conditions, is a condition in which some people infected with COVID-19 experience a variety of long-term symptoms that can last weeks, months or years after the infection resolves. 

Symptoms are usually hard to explain and manage. People with long COVID have reported a wide range of symptoms, such as fatigue, brain fog, fever, shortness of breath, fast-beating heart, cough, chest pain, sleep problems, joint pain, difficulty thinking clearly and depression or anxiety among other things. 

In this large-scale observational study, the researchers analyzed the follow-up time period from the timestamp of their first COVID infection until they reported a diagnosis of long COVID, vaccination, reinfection or death — whichever came first.

Of the 299,692 vaccinated individuals from the study, around 1,201 were diagnosed with long COVID during the follow-up period, compared with 4,118 long COVID cases among the 290,003 unvaccinated participants.