A UK study has revealed negative health impacts from severe cases of Covid-19 continue to affect many people even a year after contracting the disease, making it urgent to develop treatments. Christopher Brightling of the University of Leicester, who co-led the study, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal, “Without effective treatments, long Covid could become a highly prevalent new long-term condition.”
The study, involving altogether more than 2,300 people showed just 26 per cent of those who had been hospitalised with Covid-19 reporting a full recovery after five months and only 28.9 per cent after a full year. Women were 33 per cent less likely than men to make a full recovery.
The most common symptoms reported by the long Covid suffered were breathlessness, fatigue, muscle pain, sleep problems, limb weakness and mental health impairment. Brightling said there was “an urgent need for healthcare services to support this large and rapidly increasing patient population.”
