COVID-19 variants and its association with long-COVID

Content Editor: Dr. M Swathi Shenoy

September 11, 2023 at 12:30:00 PM

Global Health, COVID-19

A recent study was conducted to find the association between virus variants, vaccination, past exposure, and the risk of developing long COVID symptoms.
The study compared the risk of developing PCC after infection with Wild type, Alpha, Delta, and Omicron SARS-CoV-2, depending on previous vaccinations and/or infections.
The study was a prospective cohort study conducted in Germany, conducted before the introduction of the bivalent vaccine.
An estimated 18,000 individuals were included in the study.
The salient findings of the study were:

2,822 participants reported symptoms 12 weeks after infection, of whom 5.1% had no previously reported symptoms.
Compared to those who were vaccinated three times and those who had omicron infection, the unvaccinated individuals with wild type of infection had a higher risk for long COVID.
The risk was also higher among those unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals with alphavirus infection.
Regardless of the time since the last infection, the number of previous infections was strongly linked to a lower risk of long COVID-19.
However, these factors did not have any effect on the symptom severity of long-COVID.

The lack of protection against long covid may turn out to be a serious problem in the future.