Long Covid, more than one in two hospitalized has symptoms of the virus after 24 months – breaking latest news

On the long-term course of the
post Covid symptoms we still know little but recently a Chinese study has provided us with valuable information on what happened two years later in those affected by the infection in the first pandemic wave. The study, published in Lancet Respiratory Medicinecontains good and bad news: the bad that after 24 months, more than half of those who had contracted the virus in the acute phase still suffer from complaints
, while the good that the symptoms gradually subside over time. The authors followed 1,192 people infected with Sars-CoV-2 and hospitalized between January 7 and May 29, 2020 at Jin Yin-tan Hospital in Wuhan, evaluating them after 6, 12 and 24 months. The patients, 54 percent were men with an average age of 57, underwent a series of clinical checks (spirometry, chest CT scan, quality of life questionnaires) and final interviews to understand the frequency and severity of both physical and psychological disorders suffered. One year after the acute phase of the disease, the percentage of subjects complaining of at least one symptom was 68 percent

while it fell to 55 percent after two.

Tiredness, anxiety, depression

The most often reported symptoms were generalized fatigue, easy muscle fatigue and sleep disturbances (but also joint pain, palpitations, dizziness, shortness of breath). The assessment of the psychic state and the quality of life gradually improved with, however, the persistence of states of anxiety and depression in 12 percent of patients two years after recovery, as well as for the perception of shortness of breath. The latter, dyspneaHowever, a very frequent symptom, it is confirmed as a disorder of difficult evaluation, without a clear correspondence with the clinical data which often are perfectly normal. Patients who continued to experience symptoms after some time were almost four times more likely to have mobility problems, pain or discomfort, and over seven times greater anxiety and depression. In addition, they were nearly three times more likely to have outpatient visits and 1.5 times higher risk of being hospitalized. The older age is the female sex (as already documented by other studies) constituted important risk factors for the development of symptoms and for their persistence over time. An interesting fact is that there was no close correlation between the severity of the disease suffered during hospitalization and post-Covid disorders.

Do vaccines reduce symptoms?

This study photographs a situation that we are only now beginning to understand, that of the long-term effects of the first pandemic wave, but it also raises a series of questions: what will happen further in time? Will all the other variants that have followed one another be responsible for post-Covid with the same frequency and severity? How we have to follow this huge mass of patients over the years to best assist them and how should we redefine the health needs and organizational responses of the National Health Services? And finally, vaccines can reduce post-Covid symptoms in whom has already suffered from acute infection? In fact, some recent scientific research seems to suggest a possible action in this sense too, perhaps reducing the charge of viral reservoirs remained dormant in the body and decreasing the risk of subsequent re-infections which would aggravate the clinical picture. There are many questions that the research has yet to answer, but some are now beginning to become clearer.