COVID vaccines reduce long COVID risk, new study shows

The good news is, the risk of developing Long COVID has dropped significantly since the start of the pandemic—and, according to a new study, we have COVID-19 vaccines to thank for much of this decline. The bad news is, the risk of developing this post-acute infection syndrome remains substantial. At the pandemic’s onset, approximately 10% of people who suffered COVID-19 infections went on to develop Long COVID. Now, the risk of getting Long COVID has dropped to about 3.5% among vaccinated people (primary series). While this is a considerable decline, over 1.3 million Americans are still becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 every day. “You do the math—3 to 4% of those people is a huge number of potential Long COVID patients being added to the roster,” says Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, chief of Research and Development Service at Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System and the study’s senior author. The study also revealed...