The Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is much less prone to trigger lengthy COVID than the Delta pressure, in line with a examine printed in The Lancet journal.
Long COVID is outlined as having new or ongoing signs 4 weeks or extra after the beginning of the illness, the researchers stated.
Symptoms embrace fatigue, shortness of breath, lack of focus, and joint ache, which may adversely have an effect on day-to-day actions, and in some circumstances might be severely limiting, they stated.
The researchers discovered that the chances of experiencing lengthy COVID have been between 20-50 per cent much less throughout the Omicron interval versus the Delta interval, relying on age and time since vaccination.
“The Omicron variant appears substantially less likely to cause Long-COVID than previous variants but still 1 in 23 people who catch COVID-19 go on to have symptoms for more than four weeks,” stated examine lead writer Claire Steves from King’s College London, UK.
The examine recognized 56,003 UK grownup circumstances first testing optimistic between December 20, 2021, and March 9, 2022, when Omicron was the dominant pressure.
Researchers in contrast these circumstances to 41,361 circumstances first testing optimistic between June 1, 2021, and November 27, 2021, when the Delta variant was dominant.
The evaluation reveals 4.4 per cent of Omicron circumstances have been lengthy COVID, in comparison with 10.8 per cent of Delta circumstances.
However, absolutely the variety of individuals experiencing lengthy COVID was in actual fact greater within the Omicron interval, the researchers stated.
This was due to the huge variety of individuals contaminated with Omicron from December 2021 to February 2022, they stated.
The UK Office of National Statistics estimated the variety of individuals with lengthy COVID truly elevated from 1.3 million in January 2022 to 2 million as of May 1, 2022.
“Given the numbers of people affected it is important that we continue to support them at work, at home and within the NHS,” Steves added.
