Long Covid: Only one in three patients feel completely well

Less than a third of patients who develop long-term symptoms after being treated for Covid-19 say they feel they have fully recovered after one year, according to a new British study.

Simply put, at least two in three long-term Covid-19 sufferers continue to have one or more symptoms 12 months after being discharged from the hospital.

Numerous studies have confirmed that persistent symptoms for months after coronavirus infection are not uncommon. The new study concluded that in fact most of those who have long-term symptoms after hospitalization show relatively little improvement and their condition is largely the same after one year as it was seven months earlier (ie five months after the discharge).

The PHOSP-COVID study, led by medical professor Chris Brightling of the University of Leicester, has yet to be published in a scientific journal, according to the British Guardian.  It compared data from 2,320 adults who had been discharged five months earlier and 924 people who had been discharged from the hospital a year ago.

Between the fifth and 12th months after their treatment with Covid-19, the proportion of those who reported complete recovery had remained about the same (almost 30%), as did their symptoms such as shortness of breath, fatigue and pain.

About 10% felt a significant amount of "fog" in their brain after 12 months, an indication of a decline in their cognitive functions.

"Only one in three participants felt fully recovered after one year.  Unfortunately, we weren’t seeing improvements at one year from where people were at five months post-discharge,”  said researcher Dr. Rachel Evans of the British National Institutes of Health. Due to insufficient data, the researchers did not rule out that the real proportion of those who fully recover within a year ranges from 20% to 60%.

The study classified people with long-term Covid-19 symptoms into four categories based on the number and severity of their symptoms and found that those in the mild symptoms group reported an average of four symptoms, while those in the very severe symptoms category reported more than 20.

Women, obese patients, those with mobility problems, and those with elevated levels of specific inflammatory marker proteins in their blood usually had more severe symptoms.