- About 23% of patients were experiencing at least one symptom two years later.
- Pain at the pump: RV sales skyrocketed during COVID.
- Of the 173 patients recruited, 91 had been hospitalized.
Early in the COVID-19 epidemic, patients who never required hospitalisation for the illness still had at least one lingering symptom a year later, demonstrating that even minor cases can have long-term health effects, according to researchers at St. Joseph’s Health in Paterson.
Showing symptoms
In a study that for two years tracked 173 St. Joseph’s patients with mild and severe COVID cases, about half — including some who had mild cases — still had shortness of breath, fatigue, body aches or other ailments a year after infection.
About 23% of patients were experiencing at least one symptom two years later.
Although research is ongoing across the globe on long COVID, there is much that scientists and physicians don’t know about lingering symptoms in adults and children.
Complicating the research is that the original strain has continually mutated into new variants, from delta that hit New Jersey hard late last summer to several omicron subvariants currently circulating the globe and causing cases to spike.
Long COVID has been found most often in those who initially experienced severe illness but has also been found in more mild cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Limitations
The St. Joseph’s study acknowledged it had limitations with small patient size, the accuracy of patients’ memory and the loss of some patients for follow-up questions.
Still, the patients in the study were among the first infected with COVID during the pandemic, in March and April of 2020 when St. Joseph’s was one of the hardest hit hospitals catering to densely populated lower Passaic County communities.
“We had been hit so early that we knew we had a lot of patients that we could go to and collect information on over the years.”
Of the 173 patients recruited, 91 had been hospitalized.
The study also focused on minorities, which make up a sizable portion of the communities St. Joseph’s serves.
About 47% of patients in the study were Hispanic and 28% African American.
Persistent COVID symptoms one year later
At the one-year mark, the most common recurring symptoms among all patients were:
- 25% shortness of breath
- 24% fatigue
- 21% anxiety
- 18% difficulty focusing
- 18% body aches
- 16% headaches
About 50% of those reporting symptoms at the one-year mark were not hospitalized, Millet said in an interview.
Women were more likely to have persistent symptoms at two years compared to men, the study showed.
Millet hopes the study will be a building block for further research into long COVID.
“There’s still so much we don’t know about it more than two years into this pandemic,” he said.
“But we’ve shown that symptoms can last as long as two years even in patients who had mild symptoms.”
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Source: North Jersey
