Addressing Parliament last week, Matt Hancock said that early research into so-called “long Covid” suggested two findings:
- Young people (under 50) are about twice as likely to suffer from “long Covid” after a coronavirus infection
- There was “no correlation” between the severity of the initial illness and the length of the symptoms afterwards
While there is much we still don’t know about long Covid, the evidence cited by the Health Secretary does not support his claims—and it actually suggests the opposite.
On 21 October, researchers published analysis of data from the Covid Symptom Study app. This is based on 4,182 confirmed cases of Covid-19 among people who consistently reported their symptoms in the weeks afterwards.
It found symptoms lasting more than four weeks were about twice as common among the over-70s as among the under-50s.
And people with long Covid were “more likely to have required hospital assessment in the acute period.”
Overall, 13.9% of the confirmed cases in the study had visited hospital. However, among those reporting symptoms for at least four weeks this rose to 31.5%, and among those reporting symptoms for at least eight weeks it was 43.9%.
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