A scientific study, the results of which were published Thursday, showed that most of the long-term but minor symptoms associated with Covid-19 tend to disappear within a year after infection with the virus.
The authors of this Israeli study, the results of which were published in the British Medical Journal, explained that “most of the symptoms or conditions that appear after a minor infection with Covid-19 last for several months, but the situation returns to normal within a year.”
Long-term COVID is characterized by persistent symptoms or the appearance of new symptoms more than four weeks after the initial infection.
In an interview with Agence France-Presse, the researcher at the Israeli KI Research Institute, Metal Bevas Benita, co-author of the study, said that the results are “encouraging”, in light of concerns about how long the symptoms may last.
“The vast majority of patients are back to normal within a year, and I think that’s good news,” she said.
The results also show that “vaccinated people were at a lower risk of breathing difficulties, which is the most common effect in the case of mild Covid-19, compared to unvaccinated people.”
In details, slight differences were observed between male and female patients. In contrast, children developed fewer effects than adults during the early stages of COVID-19 infection, and these effects mostly disappeared by the end of the period, with similar results across all the different variants of COVID-19 included in the study.
“These results indicate that despite the fear and discussion of the long-term Covid phenomenon since the beginning of the pandemic, the vast majority of mild cases do not suffer from acute or long-term chronic symptoms,” the researchers said.
The research was conducted on the basis of electronic records of Israel’s second largest health insurance fund, Maccabi Healthcare Services, and nearly two million members of the fund underwent COVID-19 tests between March 1, 2020 and October 1, 2021.
And last September, at least 17 million people in Europe had suffered from long-term Covid disease in the first two years of the pandemic, according to the World Health Organization.