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with Summer wave As Covid-19 infections continue to sweep the country, a timely new study looks at the risk of contracting Covid-19 and whether the odds have changed over time.
Since the start of the epidemic, the risk of contracting long-term covid has decreased, but it is still high, especially for people who have not received the coronavirus vaccine.
According to an analysis by the federal Agency for Health Care Research, about 18 million American adults, about 7%, have had prolonged covid. It has been published In June. Harvard economist David Cutler Estimate In the year The total long-term cost of Covid in 2022 was $3.7 trillion, or 17% of the country's pre-Covid GDP.
The new study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests the human and financial toll continues to rise. The investigation relied on computers and advanced machine learning to sift through data in millions of medical records held by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the VA Health System set out to track people who contracted Covid at different points in the outbreak — before vaccines were available, when the delta variant controlled transmission and after the Omicron family entered the picture — to see if the risk of long-term Covid-related symptoms had changed.
They also take into account the vaccination status. People were considered vaccinated if they had received at least their first series of shots and were unvaccinated.
The study included more than 441,000 people who were diagnosed with Covid-19 between March 2020 and the end of January 2022 and lived for at least 30 days. Their records were compared to more than 4.7 million people who did not have Covid but who saw the VA for other reasons during the same period.
The researchers found that 1 in 10 people who contracted Covid in the first year, when their ancestors' coronavirus was spreading and their immunity to the virus was low, showed symptoms consistent with long-term Covid. If the symptoms were new between 30 days and one year after the first covid infection, they were counted as chronic covid in 10 disease types.
In the year Vaccines were a game-changer, halving long-term exposure to Covid during the delta wave of summer 2021.
But for the unvaccinated, the risk was higher during the delta. Approximately 10% continue to have symptoms after the initial infection.
In the year In Omicron, which began after Thanksgiving in 2021, 3.5% of vaccinated people lived long after the acute phase of infection, while 7.7% of unvaccinated people did.
The study has some limitations. People treated by the VA are mostly white men, so the study population is not as diverse as the general population, and the findings may not apply to everyone.
For example, a A recent study If you get Covid-19 for the first time while pregnant, about 1 in 10 people will develop long-term Covid-19, which may be higher than in the general population.
The new study found no difference between people who stopped after the first series of Covid-19 vaccines and those who received recommended boosters to keep their immunity up to date as the virus changes over time.
Senior study author Dr. Ziad Al-Ali, executive director of research and development at the St. Louis Health Care System, said the question, however, does not take into account the immunity that people may develop after being infected and reincarnated. He is looking like a follower.
Al-Ali estimates that almost three-quarters of the long-term reduction in the risk of Covid-19 since the start of the epidemic is due to vaccination.
While the cause or causes of prolonged Covid symptoms are not fully understood, there is some evidence that people with prolonged Covid have an active virus hiding in their bodies after the initial infection.
“Vaccines help your immune system get rid of the virus,” Al-Ali said. “They help the immune system suppress the viral load and clear the virus quickly.”
Dr. Hector Bonilla, co-director of Stanford's Post-Acute Covid-19 Syndrome Clinic, said the importance of vaccination was a key takeaway from the study.
Bonilla said that when Covid vaccines first became available, most people were eager to get vaccinated, and the number of new patients coming to doctors with symptoms dropped significantly.
Now, instead of a flood, there is a steady stream of new patients at his clinic, some of whom are chronically ill after a second or third infection.
“Long-term Covid is a bad disease,” Bonilla said. And many people are caught off guard when confronted. But at this point, most have made up their minds on whether or not they will be up to date with their shots. He said more people need to understand that vaccination is an important way to reduce the long-term risk of Covid.
“Vaccination is still a very important part of preventing long-term symptoms of Covid,” Bonilla said.
After the impact of the vaccine, according to the study, 30 percent of the increased risk is probably due to the changes made by the virus.
“The virus is changing, it's evolving, and even among unvaccinated people, over time it's made the long-term risk of Covid-19 less than it was in the first or early stages of the epidemic,” Al-Ali said.
So the latest data suggests that at least 3 out of 100 people who have been vaccinated at least in their primary series and who are now infected with Covid-19 will have a long Covid-19, Al-Ali said.
That is important progress, but there are still large numbers of people with disabilities and ill health.
3.5% of experts who were not involved in the study agree that the long-term risk of Covid is still large and worrisome.
Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist at Columbia University, said of people with long-standing Covid-19: “The large number of new infections and re-infections is still translating into huge numbers of people.”
He said that the epidemic has been declining since the early days, and that we are still seeing long-term cases of Covid-19 patients who have recently been infected.
Al Ali said this study and others emphasize the need for more funding for integrated and ongoing care for long-term Covid patients, as well as a more urgent need to find a cure.
“I don't think America is doing enough to solve this problem,” Al Ali said. “I understand the desire to move on and put everything behind us, but the fact is, there are literally millions of people suffering from long-term covid, and even if the numbers are decreasing, there will be millions more.
“Of course, there is no plan to solve this problem, and it cannot happen.”