Some long COVID-19 patients feel better after vaccinations

Judy Dodd began struggling with long COVID-19 symptoms last spring — shortness of breath, headaches, exhaustion. Then she got the vaccine.

After her first Pfizer-BioNTech shot in late January, she felt so physically miserable that she had to be persuaded to get the second. For three days after that one, she also felt awful. But the fourth day, everything changed.

“I woke up, and it was like, ‘Oh, what a beautiful morning,’” said Dodd, a middle school teacherwhoisalsoanactorand director. “It was like I’d been directing ‘Sweeney Todd’ for months, and now I’m directing ‘Oklahoma.’”

Dodd, who continues to feel good, is among a number of people reporting that the postCOVID-19 symptoms they have experienced for months have begun improving, sometimes significantly, after they got the vaccine. It is a phenomenon that doctors and scientists are watching closely, but as with much about the year-long pandemic, there are many uncertainties.

Scientists are only beginning to study any potential effect of vaccines on long COVID-19 symptoms. Anecdotes run the gamut: Besides those who report feeling better after the shots, many people say they have experienced no change, and a small number say they feel worse.

Reports from doctors vary too. Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious-disease physician at Columbia University, said about 40% of the long COVID-19 patients he has been treating cite symptom improvement after the vaccine.

“They notice, ‘Hey, over the days, I’m feeling better. The fatigue isn’t so bad. Maybe smell is coming back,’” Griffin said.

Other doctors say it is too earlytoknow. This month, a small study by British researchers that has not yet been peer-reviewed found that eight months after people were hospitalized for COVID-19, those who were vaccinated experienced improvement in more long COVID-19 symptoms than those who were not yet vaccinated.

The 44 vaccinated patients in the study were older and had more underlying medical conditions, since people with those characteristics qualified for vaccines earlier.

One month after vaccination, those patients reported improvement in 23% of their long COVID symptoms, like joint pain and breathing, while 5.6% of their symptoms had worsened. The 22 unvaccinated people questioned at that time said 15% of their symptoms were better, while 14% of their symptoms were worse. There was no difference in response between people who received the PfizerBioNTech

and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines.

Additional information comes from two surveys of several hundred people with long COVID symptoms, many of whom were never hospitalized for the disease.

One survey of 345 people, mostly women and mostly in the United Kingdom, found that two weeks or more after their second vaccine dose, 93 felt slightly better and 18 felt back to normal — a total of 32% reporting improved long COVID-19 symptoms.

In that survey, 61 people, just under 18%, felt worse, most of them reporting only a slight decline in their condition. Nearly half — 172 people — reported feeling no different.

Another survey, by Survivor Corps, of a group of more than 150,000 COVID survivors found that as of March 16, 207 of 508 respondents reported some improvement, while 231 felt no change and 70 felt worse.