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Prolonged COVID — lingering symptoms that can follow a COVID diagnosis — plagues millions of Americans. It may be less likely after a second bout of COVID than after the first. For those living with it, it can be debilitating. Judy Schafer, 58, met with a group of other women with long-term COVID via Zoom, at her home in Seattle, Wash., in January.
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Prolonged COVID — lingering symptoms that can follow a COVID diagnosis — plagues millions of Americans. It may be less likely after a second bout of COVID than after the first. For those living with it, it can be debilitating. Judy Schafer, 58, met with a group of other women with long-term COVID via Zoom, at her home in Seattle, Wash., in January.
Jovelle Tamayo/The Washington Post via Getty Im
If you’ve gotten COVID more than once, as many people have, you may be wondering if your risk of experiencing chronic symptoms of chronic COVID is the same with each new infection.
The answer seems to be no. The chances of long COVID – a range of symptoms including fatigue and shortness of breath – significantly between the first and second infection, according to recent research.
“The risk seems to be lower the second time than the first time for developing prolonged COVID,” said Daniel Ayoubkhania statistician at the Office for National Statistics in the United Kingdom, who has been studying COVID in that country for a long time.
But the risk does not fall to zero, according to latest results of an ongoing survey of more than 500,000 people in the UK until March 5.
“The risk of prolonged COVID is significantly lower, … but it’s still not negligible. It’s not impossible to have prolonged COVID a second time if you didn’t develop it the first time. I think that’s the main takeaway from in our study,” Ayoubkhani said.
![Family caregivers of people with prolonged COVID carry an additional burden](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/02/03/long-covid-caregiving-portrait-dip_sq-ab5216d6788410e2c61c4f7043ae5344d4a568ad-s100.jpg)
The survey tracks long-term symptoms of COVID such as fatigue, muscle pain, shortness of breath and concentration problems. Fatigue and trouble concentrating are the most common.
Among adults in the survey, 4% reported long-term symptoms of COVID persisting for at least four weeks after their initial infection, the survey found. In contrast, only 2.4% of those who did not develop long-term health problems after their first infection reported persistent symptoms after their second case.
“That’s a significant reduction in the odds,” he said.
The study did not examine why the risk for prolonged COVID is lower from a second infection than from a first. But Ayoubkhani says there could be several reasons.
For example, the immunity people have built up from previous infections can reduce the risk of getting long-lasting COVID from the next one. “We don’t know that from our data, but that’s a hypothesis,” he said.
Another possibility is that the study did not include those who got chronic COVID from their first infection, so those who did not get it from their first infection may be inherently less susceptible to chronic COVID in some cases. factor.
“It may have something to do with a person’s predisposition,” he said.
The study also did not examine whether a second infection worsens symptoms in people with long-standing COVID.
Although the study was conducted in the UK, there is no reason to believe that the results cannot be applied to the US, he said.
In fact, the findings are consistent with an earlier study who produced similar results by analyzing data from hundreds of thousands of patients treated through the US Veterans Administration.
The study, published in November, found that the risk of still experiencing health problems a year after getting COVID dropped from about 10% from a first infection to about 6% from a second infection.
“Undeniably, we see very clearly that for a second infection the risk is lower than for a first infection,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Alyan epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis who led that study.
Al-Aly agrees that it may be due to immunity from the initial infection. Another factor is that later strains of the virus appear to cause milder disease, which may be less likely to lead to prolonged COVID.
“When people get reinfected they generally get reinfected with omicron, which is definitely milder,” he said, discussing the results of his study.
Another possible influence could be improved treatments, which have reduced the severity of COVID, he said.
Neither study examined the risk of prolonged COVID after the third or fourth infection, but Al-Aly expects the risk to continue to decrease with each subsequent infection.
“All of these things point in the right direction that gives me hope that at some point in time re-infection may add trivial risks or inconsequential risks,” he said.
![Millions of Americans have chronic COVID. Many of them are no longer working](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2022/07/28/georgialinders_sq-5be3770b330791073a9827cd81750cc592449637-s100.jpg)
“That’s our hope. We don’t have data. But that’s our hope,” he says.
But Al-Aly said that because so many people are still getting the virus, the total number suffering from chronic health problems continues to rise even with a lower risk from secondary infection.
“I liken it to Russian Roulette,” Al-Aly said. “The probabilities at the individual level of having prolonged COVID after a second infection compared to the first are lower for any individual person.”
But he added, “that risk is not zero,” and that means at the population level, we’re still seeing an increasing number of chronic COVID cases in the community — and a growing burden on caregivers and society.
Edited by Carmel Wroth.