For many patients it’s Loooooong COVID.
About 1 in 20 people with long COVID continue to live with symptoms at 18 months, and another 42% reported only some improvement in their health and wellbeing in the same time frame, a large study out of Scotland found.
Loss of smell was almost 9 times more likely in this group compared to the never infected group in one analysis where researchers controlled for other possible factors. The risk for loss of taste was almost 6 times greater, followed by risk of breathlessness at 3 times higher. "Unfortunately, these long COVID symptoms are not getting better as the cases of COVID get milder," says Thomas Gut, DO, Medical Director for the Post COVID recovery program at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City."Quite the opposite — this infection has become so common in a community because it's so mild and spreading so rapidly that we're seeing more long COVID symptoms than ever before.
"We saw many post-COVID members who had mild cases and their long-haul symptoms were worse weeks later than the virus itself," says Penziner.