Coronavirus – All news: Three-quarters of Covid-19 hospitalized patients continue to have at least one symptom of the disease six months after becoming ill, according to a new Chinese scientific study, the largest of its kind to date. which confirms that often one does not easily “get rid” of the coronavirus.
The researchers, who published the study in the medical journal The Lancet, studied data from 1,733 patients with an average age of 57 in Wuhan, the pandemic city. It was found that 76% had one or more symptoms six months after the initial diagnosis of infection.
The most common symptom is fatigue or muscle weakness (in 63% of patients, ie almost in two in three), while sleep difficulties (in 26% or in one in four) and anxiety or depression (in 23%) are also often reported. ). Patients who were hospitalized in a more serious condition and needed oxygen or had intubation, six months later had greater lung damage and difficulty breathing (29% and 56% of patients respectively), as well as kidney problems (13% the patients).
The study also leaves open the question of how likely a re-infection is, given that it found in former patients lower levels of neutralizing antibodies after six months (53% reduction, ie more than half), compared to the initial acute phase of the infection.
It remains under investigation internationally how long the recovery phase can last after a serious infection (the so-called “long Covid-19”). “Because Covid-19 is such a new disease, we are only now beginning to understand some of its long-term effects on patients' health. “Our analysis shows that most patients continue to live with at least some of the effects of coronavirus after discharge from the hospital, especially those who have had a serious infection,” said Bin Kao, a professor of pulmonology and intensive care at Peoki Medical University in the capital.
