Australian researchers call for abandoning term ‘long COVID’: nothing unique

Long Covid may be no different from other post-viral syndromes, such as those that occur after flu, according to new research from Queensland Health.

The study’s lead author, Queensland’s chief health officer Dr John Gerrard, said it was “time to stop using terms like ‘long Covid’ because they imply there is something unique about the long-term symptoms associated with the virus.” , and in some cases create increased vigilance.

There are different definitions of long Covid, but the World Health Organization defines post-Covid or long Covid as occurring in people still experiencing symptoms three months after their initial Covid-19 infection, when those symptoms cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis.

The study surveyed 5,112 adults who had symptoms of respiratory illness and underwent PCR testing between May and June 2022. Of these, 2,399 were positive for Covid-19, 995 were positive for influenza and 1,718 were negative for both.

One year after the PCR test, participants were asked about current symptoms and worsening symptoms using a questionnaire sent via SMS link.

Overall, 16% reported ongoing symptoms a year later, and 3.6% reported moderate to severe impairment in daily activities.

The study, which Gerrard will present next month at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Barcelona, ​​found no evidence that those who had Covid-19 were more likely to have functional limitations a year later compared with those who there was no Covid-19 (3.0% vs. 4.1%).

As The Guardian continues, the 3% of study participants who had ongoing impairment after contracting Covid-19 was similar to the 3.4% with ongoing impairment after flu.

The study also looked at specific symptoms in patients with moderate to severe impairment, and found that in both Covid-positive and Covid-negative patients, the same percentage (94%) reported one or more of the commonly reported symptoms of long Covid: fatigue, worsening symptoms after exercise, brain fog, and changes in taste and smell.

Gerrard said long Covid may have appeared to be a separate and severe illness due to the large number of people infected with Covid-19 over a short period of time, rather than the severity of long-term Covid symptoms.

“We think it’s time to stop using terms like ‘long Covid’. They wrongly imply that there is something unique and exceptional about the long-term symptoms associated with this virus. This terminology can cause unnecessary fear and, in some cases, increased vigilance for longer-term symptoms that can impede recovery.”

At a press conference on Friday, Gerrard said: “I want to make it clear that the symptoms that some patients have described after contracting Covid-19 are real and we believe they are real. Our point is that the incidence of these symptoms with Covid-19 is no higher than with other respiratory viruses, and that the use of this term ‘long Covid’ is misleading and, I believe, harmful.”

The researchers acknowledged that the findings are associational and do not reflect prevalence, and acknowledged limitations in that participants who had hospital visits or had pre-existing conditions could not be identified. They also said that since 90% of people in Queensland had been vaccinated when Omicron arrived, the lower severity of long Covid could be due to vaccination and this variant.

Professor Philip Britton, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at the University of Sydney and part of the long-running Covid Australia collaboration, welcomes the study given the lack of published research in Australia in this area.

However, Britton admits that the study’s conclusion that it was time to stop using terms like long Covid was “overblown and potentially unhelpful. Long Covid was a global phenomenon recognized by WHO.”

Professor Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Australian National Phenomena Center at Murdoch University, said the question of whether long Covid was unique “cannot be easily answered in this work”.

“The study is observational in nature, based on reported symptoms without any physiological or detailed functional follow-up data. Without laboratory pathophysiological evaluation of individual patients, it is impossible to say that this is indistinguishable from influenza-associated or any other post-viral syndrome,” Nicholson notes.