A new study has found an alarming number of people hospitalised with COVID-19 do not feel fully recovered more than a year later, highlighting the need for healthcare services to support patients with Long COVID.
The UK research found only one in four people hospitalised with COVID-19 feel fully recovered a year later.
The study, published on Scimex, found the most common ongoing Long COVID symptoms were fatigue, muscle pain, physically slowing down, poor sleep and breathlessness.
Long COVID is the term used to describe the effects of coronavirus that continue or develop long after initial infection. Many doctors are urging Kiwis that have contracted the virus to rest to help avoid being affected by long COVID.
The study also highlights the lack of treatment for Long COVID sufferers, saying there is likely an "enormous burden" from an ever-growing cohort of patients.
"The limited recovery from 5 months to 1 year after hospitalisation in our study across symptoms, mental health, exercise capacity, organ impairment, and quality-of-life is striking," one of the study's leads Dr Rachael Evans said.
Women, people with obesity and patients who need mechanical ventilation in hospital were less likely to feel fully recovered after a year and were at higher risk for more severe ongoing health impairments.
One of the study's leads Professor Christopher Brightling said the data highlights the urgency for effective interventions as there are no specific therapeutics for long COVID.
"Our study highlights an urgent need for health-care services to support this large and rapidly increasing patient population in whom a substantial burden of symptoms exist, including reduced exercise capacity and substantially decreased health-related quality of life 1 year after hospital discharge," Prof Brightling said.
"Without effective treatments, Long COVID could become a highly prevalent new long-term condition."
The study is being presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) and is being published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
So far more than 890,000 people in New Zealand have caught the virus.
