About half of hospitalized COVID-19 patients experienced at least one symptom 12 months later, according to a large study published in the medical journal The Lancet.
Nearly one in three patients suffered from shortness of breath, while one in five patients said they still experienced fatigue and muscle weakness, the researchers found.
The study that followed 1,276 patients discharged from a hospital in Wuhan, China, between January and May last year, also found that women were twice as likely to deal with lung dysfunction compared to men.
Evidence that some patients will take more than a year to recover “should be taken into account when planning the provision of health care services after a pandemic,” said Bin Cao, professor at the National Center for Respiratory Medicine, China-Japan Friendship.
An earlier study of 1,733 COVID-19 survivors by the same researchers found that six months after infection, about three-quarters had persistent health problems.
Vaccines are not risky
COVID-19 patients face a much higher risk of developing blood clots than those vaccinated with AstraZeneca or Pfizer injections, according to a large-scale UK study.
For every 10 million people who receive the first dose of AstraZeneca, about 66 more will suffer from blood clotting syndrome than under normal circumstances, according to the study published in the British Medical Journal. This figure compares with 12,614 more incidents recorded in 10 million people who tested positive for COVID-19.
The study followed 29 million people who received their first doses of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccine between December and April, and it also followed about 1.7 million COVID-19 patients.
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