The number of people who might develop Long COVID symptoms could put a huge burden on the health care system.
The team at UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation looked at data on cohort studies from the World Health Organization in Europe, which shows 17 million people with Long COVID in 2020 and 2021. “There are some people who have, by definition, you know, three months of symptoms,” says IHME’s Doctor Christopher Murray, “and then there are still some people in the cohort studies that have symptoms at twelve months, so some Long COVID can be very long, indeed.”
Murray says it’s about 6% with symptoms for 3 months and 1% with symptoms after a year, and he says the risk is higher in adults than in children. Murray says it’s also higher with more severe disease. Murray says they don’t have a lot of data on Omicron and Long COVID, but he says since Omicron disease is usually less severe. Murray says, “Given the general relationship between severity and risk of Long COVID, we hope that those probabilities for Long COVID should be somewhat lower for Omicron.”
However, Murray says with so much Omicron around the world, there’s concern that will further tax an already stretched health care system. He expects other countries will develop strategies similar to those in Europe to help people manage Long COVID symptoms.
Meanwhile, IHME is working to get more researchers around the world to pool their information to get a better picture.
You can watch Dr. Murray give details in the video below:
