MADRID, 9 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
New Swiss research, which will be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) next April, has revealed that persistent Covid-19 is much less likely after having the omicron infection than after the infection. first variant of the pandemic.
The Swiss study also found that healthcare workers infected with the original virus were up to 67 percent more likely to report symptoms of long-term Covid-19 than those who had not had this variant of the virus. In contrast, healthcare workers whose first infection was with the omicron variant were less likely to have symptoms of long-term Covid-19.
The research also found that having omicron after an infection of the first variant did not carry a greater risk of long-term Covid-19 or fatigue than having an infection of the original virus alone.
Dr Carol Strahm, from the Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology at the Cantonal Hospital of St Gallen, Switzerland, assessed rates of long-COVID symptoms in healthcare workers infected with the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 virus, the variant omicronica (BA.1) or both, and compared them with uninfected controls.
The prospective study involved 1,201 healthcare workers, 81 percent were women, with a median age of 43 years from nine Swiss healthcare networks.
The participants, who were recruited between June and September 2020, underwent regular Covid-19 tests and provided information on their vaccination status.
In March 2021 (Q1), September 2021 (Q2) and June 2022 (Q3) they filled out online questionnaires asking which, if any, of the 18 prolonged symptoms of Covid-19 they experienced. The most frequent symptoms were loss of the sense of smell and taste, tiredness and weakness, exhaustion and hair loss. The questionnaire also covered fatigue levels. Median follow-up time for parent virus infections was 18 months.
In the first trimester, the risk of prolonged symptoms of Covid-19 was 67% higher in the 157 healthcare workers who had had the original infection than in controls not infected with this variant. In the third trimester, the risk of prolonged symptoms was 37 percent higher in those who had had the wild-type infection than in controls.
A similar pattern was observed in the case of fatigue. In the first trimester, the risk of fatigue was 45 percent higher in those who had the parent virus, but by the third trimester the difference between the two groups was no longer significant.
However, the 429 healthcare workers whose first positive Covid-19 test was for the omicron variant were no more likely to have prolonged Covid-19 symptoms than uninfected controls. Fatigue rates were also similar between the groups.
The analysis also revealed that reinfection also carries no greater risk of persistent Covid-19 or fatigue than infection with the first variant alone. Similarly, it was proven that vaccination does not affect the risk of suffering from prolonged Covid.
