Long COVID: Most symptoms resolve within a year after mild infection, study finds
Global News
The study suggested that "mild disease does not lead to serious or chronic long-term morbidity in the vast majority of patients."
Most health issues arising from long COVID would remain for several months and be resolved within a year of diagnosis if the infection was mild, a recent study has found.
The study, published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), analyzed electronic health records from the comprehensive database of Maccabi Healthcare Services, the second-largest health maintenance organization in Israel.
The study involved the complete data of 299,855 eligible individuals, who tested positive for COVID-19 between March 1, 2020, and Oct. 1, 2021, and had not been hospitalized within a month of their diagnosis.
“Although the long COVID phenomenon has been feared and discussed since the beginning of the pandemic, we observed that most health outcomes arising after a mild disease course remained for several months and returned to normal within the first year,” the study concluded.
This suggests that “mild disease does not lead to serious or chronic long-term morbidity in the vast majority of patients,” the study said.
Long COVID, also known as post-COVID-19 conditions, refers to experiencing physical or psychological symptoms more than 12 weeks after getting infected with the virus, according to Health Canada.
The most common symptoms include fatigue, memory problems, sleep disturbances, shortness of breath, anxiety and depression.
Overall, the study found dyspnoea — also known as shortness of breath — to be the most common symptom of long COVID, which was reported in five of the six age groups, including adults aged 19-40, 41-60, and over 60 years old.
