One in ten people with mild COVID-19 STILL have persistent symptoms such as fatigue and loss of odor EIGHT months later
- Researchers compared about 300 health professionals infected with COVID-19 with about 1,000 who were not
- A total of 26% of survivors had at least one symptom that lasted for more than two months and 14.9% said they had symptoms that lasted after eight months
- In the COVID-19 group, 11% said their symptoms affected their work, social or private life, compared to 2% in the control group
- Only between 1% and 2% of coronavirus survivors said they suffered from difficulty concentrating or memory impairment.
People with mild cases of COVID-19 still experience symptoms eight months later, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that one in 10 health professionals reported fatigue or loss of taste and smell more than 30 weeks after the infection was cleared.
In addition, these moderate to severe symptoms negatively impacted their work, social or private life.
The team at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, say the findings provide further evidence for the importance of vaccination.
A new study found that 26% of COVID-19 survivors had at least one symptom that lasted for more than two months and 14.9% said they had symptoms that lasted after eight months. Pictured: A Department of Health employee trains New York Army National Guard soldiers to register people on iPads in New Rochelle, New York, March 14
In the COVID-19 group, 11% said their symptoms affected their work, social or private life, compared to 2% in the control group
For the study, published in JAMA, the team collected data from the COMMUNITY study conducted in Sweden, which looks at immunity after coronavirus.
In the first wave, blood samples were collected from 2,149 employees at Danderyd Hospital in Stockholm between April 15 and May 8 last year.
Blood samples were taken every four months and participants answered questions about long-term symptoms and their impact on quality of life.
In a third follow-up, in January 2021, the team looked at 323 health workers who had had mild COVID-19 at least eight months earlier and compared 1,072 workers who did not have the disease until then.
The results showed that 26 percent of those who tested positive in the past had at least one symptom that lasted for more than two months, compared with nine percent in the control group.
In total, 21.4 percent said their symptoms still persisted after four months and 14.9 percent said symptoms persisted after eight months.
The most common long-term symptom was loss of smell, which was experienced by 14.6 percent at least two months later and by nine percent eight months later.
Rounding out the top three long-term symptoms were fatigue and loss of taste, respectively.
Eleven percent of the COVID-19 group said their symptoms affected their work, social, or private life, compared to two percent in the control group.
‘We examined the presence of long-term symptoms after mild COVID-19 in a relatively young and healthy group of working individuals, and we found that the main long-term symptoms are loss of smell and taste,’ lead investigator of the COMMUNITY- study Dr. Charlotte Thålin, a specialist at Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet, said in a statement.
Fatigue and breathing problems are also more common in participants who have had COVID-19 but do not occur to the same extent.
Thålin noted that only one to two percent of COVID-19 survivors said they had difficulty concentrating or memory impairment.
“However, we do not see an increased prevalence of cognitive symptoms such as brain fatigue, memory and concentration problems or physical conditions such as muscle and joint pain, palpitations or long-term fever,” she said.