Even though COVID-19 has been declared over as a global emergency, it’s far from over for many people.
A new study has found that the virus can continue to affect your health for up to two years.
This condition is commonly known as long COVID.
Ziyad Al-Aly, a top researcher from Washington University School of Medicine, says that long COVID can result in a bunch of health problems.
This includes issues like diabetes, lung problems, feeling tired all the time, blood clots, and even problems with your stomach and muscles.
The study looked at medical records of about 6 million people. Some had COVID and some didn’t.
Among those who had COVID, there were people who had to go to the hospital and people who didn’t. They followed these people for two years to see how they were doing health-wise.
Here’s some good news. For people who got COVID but didn’t have to go to the hospital, the risks of serious problems like dying or going to the hospital became almost the same as those who never got the virus.
This happened about 19 months after they first got sick. Also, out of 80 long COVID symptoms they were checking, 55 became less significant over the two-year period.
But here’s the bad news. People who were so sick that they had to go to the hospital are still facing serious risks even two years later.
Their chance of dying or going back to the hospital stayed high, and they continued to have a lot of health problems related to long COVID.
Al-Aly points out that long COVID isn’t just bad for the people who get it. It’s also a problem for society as a whole. Why?
Because people who are sick can’t work like they used to, and this could affect the economy. Plus, the health care system has to spend a lot of time and money taking care of these people.
The study also found that COVID-19 has a really high “health cost.” They measured this in something called “healthy-life years lost.”
Even if you didn’t go to the hospital, COVID could cost you 80 healthy years for every 1,000 people. That’s even higher than what cancer or heart disease costs in a lifetime! About a quarter of these lost healthy years happened in the second year after getting the virus.
So, what should we do? Al-Aly says that it’s crucial to keep focusing on how to stop the virus from spreading.
This means keeping our vaccines updated and trying to find treatments for long COVID as soon as possible.
In simple terms, COVID is a gift that keeps on giving, but not in a good way.
Even after you recover, the virus can affect your health for a long time, especially if you were very sick to start with. So it’s super important to stay cautious and keep following health advice to stay safe.
If you care about long COVID, please read studies about the long mystery of long COVID: it’s not inflammation! and Long COVID: The uninvited guest that tires the brain and worsens moods.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about COVID-19 infection and vaccination linked to heart disease, and results showing extracts from two wild plants can inhibit the COVID-19 virus.
Follow us on Twitter for more articles about this topic.
