Scientists from King’s College London found that the omicron variant is less likely to cause long COVID than the delta variant.
The findings are from the first study to report on long COVID risk and the omicron variant.
The research is published in The Lancet and was conducted by Dr. Claire Steves et al.
Long COVID is defined as producing new or ongoing symptoms four weeks or more after the start of the disease. Symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, loss of concentration and joint pain.
The symptoms can adversely affect day-to-day activities, and in some cases can be severely limiting.
In the study, the team identified 56,003 UK adult cases first testing positive between December 20, 2021, and March 9, 2022, when omicron was the dominant strain.
They compared these cases to 41,361 cases first testing positive between June 1, 2021 and November 27, 2021 when the delta variant was dominant.
They found the odds of experiencing long COVID were between 20-50% less during the omicron period versus the delta period, depending on age and time since vaccination.
The analysis shows that 4.4% of omicron cases were long COVID, compared to 10.8% of delta cases.
However, the absolute number of people experiencing long COVID was in fact higher in the omicron period.
This was because of the vast numbers of people infected with omicron from December 2021 to February 2022.
The UK Office of National Statistics estimated the number of people with long COVID actually increased from 1.3 million in January 2022 to 2 million as of May 1, 2022.
The omicron variant appears substantially less likely to cause long COVID than previous variants, but still 1 in 23 people who catch COVID-19 go on to have symptoms for more than four weeks.
The team says given the number of people affected it’s important that doctors continue to support them at work, at home and within the NHS.
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