A study from the UK showed that people who had completed two doses of COVID-19 vaccination were about 41% less likely to have long-term sequelae after recovering from COVID-19.
This conclusion comes from a paper published Feb. 24 in medRxiv by chief statistics experts in the Department of Health Analysis and Life Events at the Newport National Bureau of Statistics in the United Kingdom, titled "Risk of Long Covid in people infected with SARS-CoV-2 after two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine: community-based, matched cohort." study”。
The survey, which involved 18-69 years old who tested positive for COVID-19 between April 26, 2020 and November 30, 2021, included 3,090 participants who had completed two doses of COVID-19 vaccination and 452 unvaccinated people. The results showed that 294 participants who completed two doses of COVID-19 vaccination reported long-term COVID-19 symptoms.
A healthcare worker prepares for COVID-19 vaccination at a clinic in San Antonio, Texas, usa, on Jan. 9. Xinhua
What are the long-term sequelae
Long-term SYMPTOMS (also known as "acute sequelae of COVID-19"), often defined as SYMPTOMS that last more than three months, are an important factor in raising public concerns about COVID-19 and the outbreak.
A report released by Imperial College on 24 June 2021 said more than 2 million people in the UK could be affected by these long-term sequelae, which would seriously affect the health of the public.
How to reduce and avoid long-term sequelae and health management of long-term sequelae has become an important topic of concern to researchers in various countries.
Many scientists believe that long-term COVID-19 symptoms will become a chronic disease. Because COVID-19 usually hits the lungs first, but it is not limited to respiratory diseases, and even many people's lungs are not the most affected organs, because the body's cells in many different locations contain ACE2 receptors, which is the main target of the virus, and because infection can damage the immune system throughout the body.
A UK study estimated that between 7% and 18% of COVID-19 patients continue to experience some long-term COVID-19 symptoms that last for at least 5 weeks.
A study published in August 2020 in medRxiv followed up people who had been hospitalized and found that even one month after discharge, more than 70 percent reported shortness of breath, while 13.5 percent still took oxygen at home.
This long-term sequelae is also found in the body of infected people in children.
Danielo Buonsenso, a pediatrician at Rome's Gmelli University Hospital, pioneered the study to quantify long-term COVID-19 symptoms in children, and his research team interviewed 129 children aged 6-16 who were diagnosed with COVID-19 between March and November 2020. Follow-up studies have found that more than 1 in 3 people develop one or two lingering symptoms after four months or more of infection, and 1 in 4 develop three or more symptoms such as insomnia, fatigue, muscle pain and persistent cold-like symptoms. The researchers believe that this condition is similar to the long-term symptoms of COVID-19 in adults. And the researchers found that even children with mild or no symptoms at first were not immune to these long-term sequelae.
The Uk's Office for National Statistics (ONS) has also released data showing that 9.8% of children aged 2-11 years and 13% of children aged 12-16 reported at least one lingering symptom five weeks after a positive diagnosis.
How long do long-term sequelae last?
From the current point of view, the "long-term symptoms of new crown pneumonia" that scientists are concerned about do exist, but its duration is still inconclusive, after all, the history of new crown pneumonia is only more than 2 years.
Scientists believe that although it is not yet possible to determine how long the severe impact of new crown pneumonia on hospitalized patients can last, it can be seen from the existing data during the Sars epidemic that this sequelae may not only suffer long-term damage to the lungs, but also suffer long-term damage to the heart, immune system, brain and other parts, and these symptoms will last for several years.
In 2011, Harvey Moldofsky and John Patcai of the University of Toronto in Canada followed 22 Sars patients who remained unable to work after 13-36 months of infection. Another study published in 2009, which followed SARS patients for 4 years, found that 40 percent suffered from chronic fatigue.
Between 2003 and 2018, Zhang Peixun and his colleagues at Peking University People's Hospital tracked the health of 71 people hospitalized for SARS. Even after 15 years, 4.6 percent still have significant lesions in their lungs and 38 percent have reduced lung diffusion capacity, meaning their lungs are unable to transfer oxygen to the bloodstream and remove carbon dioxide from the bloodstream.
Long-term symptoms of covid-19 are a public health problem that cannot be ignored, or may become a new chronic disease state. How to reduce and avoid the sequelae of long-term COVID-19? The paper from the Office for National Statistics in Newport, UK, undoubtedly gives an answer.
Covid-19 vaccines have an extra layer of effect
Most of the public's understanding of the role of vaccines is limited to the level of "infection prevention", and it is believed that the breakthrough infection of vaccination is basically equivalent to the "ineffectiveness" of vaccines. In fact, the prevention of infection is only the first protective effect of the vaccine, the second is the protective effect on severe disease, and the third is the protective effect on death.
Real-world data show that while COVID-19 vaccines are less effective in preventing infection, protection against severe illness and death remains high. And this research result has added an extra layer to the role of the new crown vaccine.
On January 25 this year, researchers in Israel also published a paper saying that people who had been vaccinated against Pfizer-BioNTech were much less likely to report a range of common long-term symptoms of COVID-19 than those who had not been vaccinated at the time of infection.
The COVID-19 vaccine can reduce the incidence of long-term COVID-19 symptoms, which can also be seen in the current epidemiological characteristics of Theomilon.
"The most vaccinated population is asymptomatic and mild after infection with Ami kerong. The core difference between mild and normal disease is that there is no change in lung imaging. But this is not to say that Omikeron does not invade the lungs, and the course of mild patients may also range from mild to ordinary to severe. Because of the protection of vaccines, mild diseases have reduced the damage to the lungs, and if early drug intervention is carried out for mild diseases, the possibility of further development of the disease course to ordinary or severe disease will reduce the damage to some organs. If it is not damaged, there will be no organic sequelae. A clinician said.
From this, the study confirms the means to reduce or prevent long-term symptoms of COVID-19, namely vaccination and early medication.
