There is no such condition as long Covid, say health officials
LONG COVID is no different from the after-effects of viruses like flu and people should stop using the term, health experts have warned.
The chief health officer of Queensland, Australia, said it was wrong to imply there was something unique about symptoms suffered by people following a bout of coronavirus. Instead, sufferers are simply experiencing the normal effects of recovering from a virus, which can include fatigue, brain fog, and shortness of breath – known as post-viral syndrome.
The comments follow new research by Queensland’s public health department, which studied more than 5,000 people suffering Covid-like symptoms between May and June 2022.
Analysis found no evidence that Covid-19 positive adults were more likely to have symptoms a year after their diagnosis when compared to symptomatic adults who were negative for Covid-19.
When the results were compared with nearly 1,000 people who had flu, the numbers reporting issues were similar (3 per cent vs 3.4 per cent).
Dr John Gerrard, Queensland’s chief health officer, said: “In health systems with highly vaccinated populations, long Covid may have appeared to be a distinct and severe illness because of high volumes of Covid-19 cases during the pandemic.
“However, we found that the rates of ongoing symptoms and functional impairment are indistinguishable from other post-viral illnesses.
“We believe it is time to stop using terms like ‘long Covid’. They wrongly imply there is something unique and exceptional about longer-term symptoms associated with this virus.”
Dr Gerrard added: “This terminology can cause unnecessary fear, and in some cases, hypervigilance to longer symptoms that can impede recovery.”
At the last estimate by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), about 1.9 million people were thought to be suffering symptoms of long Covid in Britain, around three per cent of the population.
However symptoms are nebulous, and can include fever, headache, muscle ache, weakness/tiredness, nausea/ vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, sore throat, cough, shortness of breath, loss of taste and loss of smell.
The ONS has pointed out that such conditions are experienced regularly within the general population. They are also common after viruses, and may be caused when the immune system fails to dial down after an infection leading to ongoing inflammation.
Research published last month by Imperial College found that people who suffered a previous infection had longterm mental deficits which equated roughly to a three-point fall in IQ.
The effect was mostly seen in those infected by the original virus or alpha variant, rather than omicron, suggesting that vaccination may have helped protect against post-covid symptoms.
The new study was carried out during the Omicron wave when large numbers of the Queensland population had already been vaccinated, and the authors said that it was unclear if the results would still hold in an unvaccinated population.
‘It wrongly implies there is something unique about longer-term symptoms associated with this virus’