(Bloomberg) – Fewer patients with Covid-19 report long-term symptoms of infection after vaccination, according to a study that suggests that injections may help relieve the severity of long-acting Covid.
The first dose of vaccine after infection with the virus was associated with a 13% drop in the chances of prolonged Covid and a second vaccine with a 9% drop in the study published Thursday in the BMJ. For seven months in 2021, researchers regularly visited the households of more than 28,000 people to ask if they were experiencing symptoms long after infection.
Findings, along with evidence that long-term Covid decreases in those infected after vaccination, suggest that injections may help reduce the prevalence of persistent symptoms.
“The large scale of this study means we can be pretty confident in what we’re seeing, but that doesn’t mean we can be sure what it means,” said Peter English, former chairman of the BMA’s Public Health Committee.
“The most obvious – and perhaps most likely conclusion – is that vaccination prevents at least some cases of long-term Covid and can reduce the severity of symptoms,” he said in an email comment. But “we still can’t say that with any certainty.” English did not participate in the study.
Approximately 1.8 million people in the United Kingdom reported experiencing prolonged Covid by April 2022, with two in three people saying the symptoms affected their daily activities, according to the latest statistics from the National Statistics Office.
The researchers who led the study called for more research to “understand the biological mechanisms underlying any improvement in post-vaccination symptoms that may contribute to the development of therapeutic agents for long-term Covid.”
© 2022 Bloomberg LP
Add Comment