Long Covid sufferers could see their symptoms resolve within a year of their initial infection, according to the latest research.
But, it’s important to note this hopeful news primarily applies to those who had a mild Covid infection in the first place.
The Israeli researchers shared their findings in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) after looking at the data from almost two million people who took a Covid test between March 2020 and October 2021.
The team compared the results of almost 300,000 people who had a mild form of the virus, but were not hospitalised, to the same number of people who were not infected with Covid during this time.
On top of that, they looked at how symptoms lingered long after infection within both those who have been vaccinated and unvaccinated.
Their data at how long Covid symptoms – such as fatigue, losing the sense of taste and smell, breathing problems, concentration, and “brain fog” – continued more than four weeks after first contracting the illness.
The team discovered symptoms “remained for several months” but almost always resolved within a year – and were not affected by the different types of Covid strains, such as Delta, Alpha and Omicron.
Ongoing breathing problems were also more common among people who did not get a vaccination, while those aged between 41 and 60 had the largest number of long-term symptoms for at least six months.
The report explains: “Although the long Covid phenomenon has been feared and discussed since the beginning of the pandemic, we observed that most health outcomes arising after a mild disease course remained for several months and returned to normal within a year.
“This nationwide dataset of patients with mild Covid suggests that mild disease does not lead to serious or chronic long-term morbidity and adds a small continuous burden on healthcare providers.
“Importantly, the risk for lingering dyspnoea was reduced in vaccinated patients with breakthrough infection compared with unvaccinated people, while risks of all other outcomes were comparable.”
The news will come as a relief to many, as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported this month that around 2.1 million people in the UK were experiencing self-reported long Covid.
This works out to 3.3% of the population.
Sadly though, there is still a large portion of people who believe they have long Covid despite first developing the symptoms more than year before.
ONS said out of the respondents to its survey, 57% had it at least one year before – 30% had it at least two years previously.