For two years, the big fear was catching Covid, and winding up in the hospital and dying. Now, if you’re fully vaccinated and boosted, that’s unlikely to happen.
Here’s the new worry: The serious impact of long-covid, where symptoms remain after the infection is gone. Will the virus cause brain fog, chronic fatigue, or muscle aches that are difficult or impossible to treat?
A recent analysis of tens of thousands of private insurance claims, founds that more than three-quarters of the patients diagnosed with long Covid “were not sick enough to be hospitalized for their initial infection,” according to The New York Times. Thirty-five percent of long-Covid cases were patients 51 to 64 years old. Seventeen percent were 23 to 35 years old.
“People 20-something who get infected – maybe don’t even get very sick or maybe not sick at all – can still get long-covid,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, an expert on infectious diseases at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “And it’s not just people in their twenties. We see kids getting long-covid even though they rarely get hospitalized and rarely die. This is not just like any other virus.”
More Info: More than 75% of nation’s long COVID patients hadn’t been hospitalized for initial illness