The milder symptoms caused by Omicron variants may also reduce the chances of Long COVID
—when symptoms linger long after a COVID-19 infection is over—but new data suggest there may be some good news for people infected with the virus more recently.European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
Dr. Carol Strahm and Dr. Philipp Kohler, both from the division of infectious diseases and hospital epidemiology at Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen in Switzerland, led the study of 1,200 health care workers in the country. The participants, mostly female nurses, agreed to regular PCR testing for COVID-19 during periods when the original virus was circulating, from February 2020 to January 2021, and during the Omicron wave from January to June 2022.
Over the 18 months from the first and last assessments, people infected with the original virus showed fewer Long COVID symptoms, but some had symptoms that remained, while those whose first positive test was during the Omicron wave did not, on the whole, report continued symptoms after their infection. When the researchers looked at symptom reports by people’s vaccination status, they saw that booster shots did not seem to make a difference in whether people developed Long COVID or not.
The differing findings could be related to the populations studied and how they defined symptoms, says Kohler. In general, Omicron causes milder infections in relatively healthy people, and data show that more severe disease is more likely to lead to the lingering symptoms of Long COVID. He notes that the size of his study was relatively small compared to the others, although it had the advantage of repeated questionnaires to track volunteers’ symptoms.
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