Masked person in the suburbs of Los Angeles, in July 2021 @Photonews
It’s been weeks since you had Covid-19 and yet you haven’t regained your pre-infection state of health? Then you could be a victim of a post-Covid condition, better known as “Covid long”. A series of persistent symptoms which, according to the WHO, appear within three months of infection and which continue to plague daily life for at least two months: fatigue, difficulty breathing, memory or sleep problems, chest and muscle pain , loss of smell and taste, depression, fever… But who is more likely to suffer this ordeal? This is the question that scientists are asking themselves, with studies recently published on the subject to obtain the first elements of an answer.
4% of the population affected
On July 21, 2022, Public Health France (SpF) revealed the results of its large-scale analysis of a representative cohort of 27,537 adults. 33.9% responded that they had contracted Covid-19, whether proven via a test or obviously without this official proof. 39.3% of them had it at least three months ago and 30% of these had a long Covid (according to the WHO definition). In other words, the long Covid affected nearly 4% of the total of people questioned by SpF. The latter specifies that symptoms persisted 18 months after infection for 20% of people who had Covid-19. Note that despite everything, the symptoms still decrease over time.
This more or less matches the results of a WHO telephone survey. According to this, 35% of adults affected by Covid-19 had not returned to their usual state of health 2-3 weeks after their tests, and 20% of 18-34 year olds without a history of chronic disease suffered a long Covid. .
The former hospitalized but not only
The French public establishment then took a closer look at the profile of these unlucky people. Three categories of individuals were visibly more affected than the others. First there are people who have been hospitalized because of the coronavirus (38%), their state of health having been particularly worrying at the time of the contraction of the disease.
But it also turns out that the long Covid can develop in other people who have not yet gone through the hospital box. This is particularly the case for women (33.8%) and working people (32.3%). A British study published last April had already identified the female gender as more at risk, as well as obese and hospitalized people with respiratory assistance. SpF also specifies that these results should be interpreted with caution, a second study should be conducted with a more random panel in order to refine the results. For now, age has not been identified as a major factor, unlike the risk of developing a severe form of Covid-19.
Children also affected but less
Another study, published this Friday in the magazine JAMA, was also interested in the under-18 age group, not taken into account by SpF. It turns out that while a third of adults are likely to develop a long Covid, the prevalence drops to 5-10% among minors (in this case interviewed in emergency services in different countries across the world). If we only take into account the children sent directly home after being received in the emergency room, this rate drops to 4.6%. As for those who were hospitalized, the percentage is 9.8%.
Those over the age of 14 are a priori more likely to be affected, but here too, care must be taken when interpreting this data. It could indeed be that those under 14 had more difficulty describing the symptoms they were feeling, which would skew the results.