A new study sheds light on the number of US veterans with long COVID, and details how long they experienced lingering symptoms. There’s not much data on long COVID and veterans, which is why the authors were pleased to release the results.
According to a study that came out Nov. 15 in Annals of Epidemiology, almost half of 363,825 veterans in a study cohort who had COVID-19 still experienced symptoms six months later. Long COVID is also known as Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19, or PASC.
Risk factors for long COVID included being African American, having diabetes, being older, and having a severe case of COVID-19, according to a team from Emory University and the Atlanta Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center.
The data was derived from veterans who tested positive for COVID-19 between February 2020 and September 2022. Most of the people in the group were white men under the age of 65 who lived in a city. Of them, 31% did not get a COVID-19 vaccine, 23% had received two COVID-19 vaccine doses, and 40% had gotten a booster.
“Results demonstrate potential health inequities for vulnerable individuals, as well as increased risk for individuals with pre-existing comorbidities,” the study authors wrote. “The prevalence of PASC provides estimates for future health care utilization. The risk factors identified can aid public health interventions to reduce the burden of PASC.”The medical community is learning more about long COVID in terms of its prevalence and long-lasting effects. By the end of 2022, 1 in 7 people in the US said they had long COVID, a study published in PLoS ONE earlier this month reported. Other recent research found that people were more likely to develop long COVID if they had a severe case of COVID-19. Another newer report found that taking the oral drugs nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid) or molnupiravir (Lagevrio) during infection only slightly reduced a person’s chance for developing long COVID in people over the age of 65.
