COVID impact Still Lingers After 3 Years After The Infection, According To A New Study

A new research study seems to suggest that the Covid-19 virus may still leave behind severe side-effects even 3 years after the infection. The research study, published in Nature Medicine, was led by Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly and was the largest study of its kind

How Severe Is The Lingering Impact Of Covid

This study conducted an analysis of around 130,000 patients, finding that various organs in the patients’ bodies were still compromised despite it having been a long time since they were struggling with the virus itself.

The findings are concerning in themselves, however they also found that those hospitalized during the initial infection faced an increased risk of other severe heart-related conditions like heart attacks, heart failure or even potentially Alzheimer’s. In general, the patients showed a 34% increase in susceptibility to health risk, when compared to people who never had Covid-19.

The long-term effects for those individuals with even just mild cases shows that their neurological, gastrointestinal and pulmonary systems of the body. These non-hospitalized patients all saw at least a 5% increase in long-term health problems.

How Is The Severity Of Covid’s Burden Measured?

The main way for researchers to measure how heavily a disease affects an individual’s vulnerability is by measuring Disability-Adjusted Life Years or DALYs, a metric that specifically aims to determine premature death as a result of poor health. It was found that for every 1000 people, long Covid resulted in around 90 DALYS, higher than heart disease or even cancer at 50 DALYs per 1000 people.

Meanwhile, amongst the less severe cases, non-hospitalized patients were at 10 DALYS per 1000 people, which highlights a significant yet less severe impact when compared to the patients who were hospitalized

The research outlines a much-needed focus on follow-up studies that fully explore the effects that the virus has had on the bodies of several victims. The findings show that, unlike what a large proportion of misinformation revolved around, the impacts of Covid-19 may be significant enough to warrant a discussion on its effects for years to come.