HAVING both vaccines slashes the chances of someone getting long Covid symptoms by a third, research shows.
It gives hope that cases of the condition will start to dwindle in the UK, after more than one million Brits have been affected.
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Long Covid is when a person has persistent coronavirus symptoms long after they have been infected.
The most common problems are fatigue and pain. Other symptoms include hair loss, high temperature and insomnia.
A paper published by the Tony Blair Institute discusses the “hidden pandemic” of long Covid with researchers at King’s College London.
Professor Tim Spector, behind the Zoe Covid Symptom Study App, worked on the study.
He said: “Long Covid remains, in many ways, the hidden pandemic.
“While 130,000 people in the UK have died from Covid-19 to date, it is estimated that more than 1 million have experienced or continue to experience ongoing symptoms from their original infection, known as long Covid.
“As the pandemic continues, these numbers will continue to grow.
‘HIDDEN PANDEMIC’
“The scale of long Covid means that there are countless individual stories of people affected physically and mentally, but a macro picture also emerges that has a significant impact and implications for the future of our health services and the economy.
“While it is now widely known that double vaccination reduces the chance of getting infected by around 85 per cent, our work indicates that on top of this, vaccines also decrease the likelihood, if someone does get infected, of developing long Covid by up to 30 per cent.”
It is more reason for people to get vaccinated, especially youngsters who are harder hit by long Covid.
The chances of having long-term symptoms does not seem to be linked to how ill you are when you first had the coronavirus.
You can still be plagued with long Covid if you were fit, healthy and young when you were infected.
But there does seem to be some risk factors – including being a woman, aged 35 to 69, having obesity or an underlying health condition, living in a poor area or working in healthcare.
