Worldwide, mortality and hospitalization rates are COVID keep dropping. But our success in mitigating the worst consequences of the pandemic 33 months ago belies the escalation of the crisis.
More and more people are surviving COVID and not attending hospitals, but more and more people are Also live with long-term symptoms of COVID. Malaise. heart problems. stomach problems. lung problems. confusion.Symptoms may persist for months or more than a year rear Infection is cleared.
21% of Americans caught SARS-CoV-2 virus This summer, he suffered from a lengthy COVID that began four weeks after he was infected, according to. new research Graduated from City University of New York.
This is up from 19%. figure The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in June.
Compare these numbers to recent COVID-related mortality and hospitalization rates in the United States (3% and 0.3%, respectively). A long COVID is the most likely serious consequence of COVID-19 infection. And it can be more likely.
The CUNY study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, focused on American adults, but the results have implications for the entire world. Exchange COVID deaths. After all, more COVID survivors means more people at risk of long-term symptoms. And COVID accumulates over time. people get sick stop sick for a while.
Epidemiologist Denise Nash, lead author of the CUNY study, said: “Despite the increased level of protection against long-term COVID from vaccination, the total number of people with long-term COVID in the United States may be increasing. There is,” he said. catch than long covid recover From long COVID.
But not to mention understanding long COVID To prevent It is not a priority in establishing global epidemiology. That needs to change, Nash said. “I think the focus on long-term COVID on top of preventing hospitalizations and deaths is long overdue.”
In recent weeks, authorities have recorded about half a million new COVID cases per day worldwide. This is not as low as the 400,000 new cases per day tallied by health authorities when the incidence hit its peak in February 2021, but it is close.
what For real But it’s worth noting that, of the 500,000 daily COVID infections, very few are fatal. Only 1,700 people die each day these days. That’s one-fifth of his daily death toll in February last year, when the number of new daily infections rose slightly.
Hospitalizations for severe COVID cases have also decreased. Global statistics are not available, but in the US hospitalizations for COVID have fallen from 15,000 a day 19 months ago to 3,700 a day now.
The decline in mortality and hospitalization rates is not difficult to explain. Globally, approximately two-thirds of adults are at least partially vaccinated. Billions of people have antibodies from past infections that they have survived. All antibodies help blunt the absolutely worst results.
“Saving lives is certainly valuable, but quality of life is also very important.“
However, long-term COVID incidence appears to be on the rise. The high reinfection rate is also a factor. Now 1 in 6 of her has had the virus more than once. A team of scientists from the University of Washington School of Medicine and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ St. Louis Health Care System found that repeated infections put her at increased risk for a variety of problems consistent with her long-term COVID symptoms, not by chance. A study this summer concludedThe more reinfections, the longer COVID.
Nash’s team crunched the numbers back to July and concluded that 7% of all adults in the U.S., or more than 18 million people, had long-standing COVID at that time. If the same rate applies globally, and there’s no reason to believe otherwise, his global case count for COVID over the long run could have pushed him past 560 million this summer. .
This number is probably much higher now, given the summer spike in infections caused by BA.5 (1 million new infections per day worldwide in July).
To Nash and his teammates’ surprise, the long-term COVID risk is not uniform across the population. A team at CUNY found that young people and women are more likely to take COVID longer. Nash said the former is explained by older people and higher vaccination rates among older people. But the latter remains a mystery. “Further study of these groups may provide clues about risk factors,” he said.
Why there are gender differences in long-term COVID risk is just one of the open questions that scientists and health officials are trying to answer. They may also be crafting new vaccine strategies and public health messages specifically for the particularly long COVID.
But by and large, they haven’t done much to address the risk of long-term symptoms, Nash said. I’m putting a lot of effort into it. that’s all Prevent hospitalization and death.
“Focusing solely on these results could make the long-term COVID situation even worse,” Nash explained.
In that sense, the long COVID is a silent crisis. Although potentially he could affect more than 500 million people, it is not a major focus of research or public health policy. “Saving lives is certainly valuable, but quality of life is also very important, which may be lacking for those who have had COVID for a long time,” said an epidemiologist at the University of Florida. Cindy Prince told the Daily Beast.
Of course, we are not incapable of preventing COVID from prolonging. The same tool that can prevent hospitalizations and deaths from COVID is Also Reduces the likelihood of long-term symptoms—by lowering the likelihood of all Any COVID, short or long. Get vaccinated. Keep your booster up to date. Wear a mask in crowded indoor spaces.
But given the evolutionary trends of SARS-CoV-2, the long-running COVID could become a growing problem, one that calls for specific solutions, even among the most cautious. The virus is still mutating. and that every new variant or subvariant tends to be more contagious than the previous one, leading to more and more breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated and boosted populations. means
If you are current and up to date, you are less likely to die or be hospitalized with COVID. But the chances of it making you sick are potentially pretty high, obviously high, for a very long time.
