July 2024 Newsmax Health<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People’s odds for long COVID appear to be declining with the advent of new variants of the virus, along with repeat infections and vaccinations, new research shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That suggests that the average person’s chances of developing long-term symptoms is falling over time, concluded a team from Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Although the cause of post-COVID-19 condition is still not fully understood, the outlook for the future for all those who have not yet developed post-COVID-19 is positive,” concluded study senior author Dr. Andr\u00e9 Karch<\/a>, from the University of M\u00fcnster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His team based its findings on a survey of almost 110,000 Germans, conducted in the fall of 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People were asked about whether (and when) they’d experienced long COVID, including symptoms such as physical exhaustion, cardiovascular problems and cognitive impairment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the World Health Organization, long COVID involves new or persistent symptoms that occur within three months of a COVID infection that can’t be explained by other causes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time of the online survey, over 80% of respondents said they had already gotten three or more COVID vaccines and 60% said they’d already been infected with the illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About a third (35%) of those who said they’d had COVID-19<\/a> said they had also experienced at least one persistent symptom anywhere from four to 12 months after their infection, the researchers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among this subgroup, a quarter said they had nine or more symptoms commonly linked to long COVID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, there were some encouraging long-term trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First of all, rates of long COVID were lowest among people who’d been infected with the latest COVID variant, omicron, the team found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Long COVID rates were higher among those infected with the earliest (“wild type”) variant circulating in late 2020, the alpha variant circulating in early 2021, or the delta variant that dominated between July and December of 2021, the study found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n