ALMOST a third of people who develop long Covid suffer with symptoms such as a headache and depression, a study has found.
Scientists compared the occurrence of symptoms after patients had been infected with Covid-19 – with those who had also caught the flu.
Experts have highlighted the most common symptoms those with long Covid will suffer from
Long Covid is when people catch the coronavirus and instead of fully recovering, they suffer symptoms for weeks, potentially months, more.
According to the experts, long Covid is the same as “long flu” but more common.
Oxford University scientists said they found nothing new in the symptoms many suffer for months after catching coronavirus.
Long-lasting effects appear to be 50 per cent more common after Covid than after flu, they said – but even this could just be because scientists are looking harder.
Professor Paul Harrison, a psychiatrist at Oxford, said: “One of the challenges of thinking about long Covid is which of these symptoms are really directly related to Covid?
“As opposed to being more generalised effects that we can see after a range of health conditions.
“Our data don’t suggest there is anything unique about the long Covid symptoms.”
And Dr Max Taquet added: “It’s a possibility that there are long-term symptoms after the flu that we had overlooked simply because we didn’t have this focus before.”
Their study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, looked at medical records from 270,000 Covid survivors in the US.
It found that 36.6 per cent of people still had long Covid symptoms between three and six months after testing positive.
This compared to 29.7 per cent of people who had the same symptoms three months after catching the flu.
Most common were anxiety or depression, which affected 15 per cent of people, followed by breathing problems which affected eight per cent.
They also included chest pain, brain fog, tiredness, headaches and muscle pains.
Another study by the Office for National Statistics surveyed staff and pupils in English schools and found 36 per cent of adults and 12 per cent of children said they developed long Covid.
That report found weakness and tiredness were most common, affecting up to 60 per cent of sufferers, followed by shortness of breath.
Professor Masud Husain, who was involved in the Oxford study, added: “A GP or a doctor will be treating the symptoms in the same way they would if they occurred in another context, like flu, until we have a better understanding of the mechanism.”
It was previously reported that over a million Brits are suffering with long Covid and that cases are rising in children.
Experts also said that you can predict whether or not you will get long Covid from the symptoms you suffer when you contract Covid initially.
