Long Covid Found in 20% of US Cases
A cooler containing nasal swabs from patients at a testing site at the North Inland Live Well Escondido Center in Escondido, California.
Photographer: Bing Guan/BloombergHere’s the latest news from the pandemic.
About 1 in 5 US adults have health problems from Covid that stick around long after they first test positive, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published this week.
Experts from the CDC detailed how, after an initial bout of Covid, a growing number of people age 18 and older continued to report symptoms that may be caused by the virus. The agency used electronic health records from March 2020 through November 2021 to analyze patients who reported certain symptoms one month to a year after having Covid.
And as Covid cases continue to increase in some parts of the US, including several regions that now fall into the CDC’s “high risk” category, the number of people with long Covid is likely to only increase, the report notes. The study didn’t assess the incidence of post-Covid symptoms in kids, an estimated half a million of whom are also suffering from lasting health problems and who can be harder to diagnose than adults.