Long Covid half as likely from omicron infection

OMICRON is half as likely as other variants to cause long Covid, a study suggests.

King’s College London studied 56,003 British adults infected between December and March this year, when omicron was dominant, and compared their symptoms with cases from when delta was prevalent.

The study, which used data from the Zoe Covid tracker and was published in The Lancet, showed that 4.4 per cent of the omicron-period cases reported long Covid, compared with 10.8 per cent of the delta timeframe infections.

However, the total number of people who had long Covid was higher in the omicron period because of the vast numbers infected.

Long Covid is defined as having new or ongoing symptoms four weeks or more after the start of disease.

Dr Claire Steves, lead author from King’s College London, said: “Omicron appears substantially less likely to cause long Covid than previous variants, but still one in 23 people who catch the virus goes on to have long Covid.”