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Long term impact

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One of the most comprehensive studies on long COVID has found that one in eight people who get infected with the coronavirus develop at least one symptom of it.

A new study published in the Lancet Journal asked more than 76,400 adults in the Netherlands to fill out an online questionnaire on 23 common long COVID symptoms. During the study which ran from March 2020 to April 2021, each participant filled out the questionnaire 24 times. Of the 4,200 of those surveyed who reported catching COVID, over 21 percent had at least one new or severely increased symptom three to five months after becoming infected.

However, nearly nine percent of a control group which did not have COVID also reported a similar increase. This led the study to conclude that 12.7 percent of those who had COVID, about one in eight, suffered from long-term symptoms.

The research found that common long COVID symptoms include chest pain, breathing difficulties, muscle pain, loss of taste and smell, and general fatigue.

With more than half a billion coronavirus cases recorded worldwide since the start of the pandemic, there has been rising concern about the lasting symptoms seen in people with long COVID.

One of the study’s authors, Aranka Ballering of the Dutch University of Groningen, said long COVID was “an urgent problem with a mounting human toll.”

With COVID cases on the rise once more in the Philippines, which on Thursday reported 4,439 additional COVID-19 cases, the highest single-day tally in nearly six months, the best defense against COVID and the distinct possibility of long COVID remains vaccination and compliance to minimum health protocols that includes mask wearing and physical distancing.

The world has been living with COVID for more than two years, but our understanding to this highly infectious disease is still evolving. The possibility of long term effects such should always weigh on our minds as we continue to live with the pandemic that has not yet been declared as over.  COVID or long COVID can only be avoided if we do all we can to prevent infecting ourselves and our loved ones.*

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