According to a new study, more than three-quarters of the people hospitalized with COVID-19 still suffered from at least one symptom after six months.
The research, published Saturday in the medical journal Lancet, involved hundreds of patients in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the new coronavirus was first detected.
Fatigue or muscle weakness were found to be the most common symptoms, while people also reported sleep problems.
Scientists said the study – among the few that detected the long-term symptoms of COVID-19 – showed the need to investigate further the long-term coronavirus effects.
“Because COVID-19 is such a new disease, we are only beginning to understand some of its long-term effects on patients’ health,” said lead author Bin Cao, of the National Center for Respiratory Medicine.
The professor said the research highlights the need for continued care of patients after being discharged from the hospital, especially those who have had serious infections.
The new study included 1,733 COVID-19 patients discharged from Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan between January and May last year.
Patients, who were on average 57 years old, were visited between June and September and answered questions about their symptoms and health-related quality of life.
Researchers also conducted physical examinations and laboratory tests.
The study found that 76 percent of the patients who participated in the follow-up (1,265 of 1,655) said they still had symptoms.
Fatigue or muscle weakness was reported with 63 percent, while 26 percent had sleep problems.
The study also looked at 94 patients whose blood antibody levels were recorded at the time of infection as part of another trial.
When these patients were tested again after six months, their levels of neutralizing antibodies were 52.5 percent lower.
According to the authors, this raises concerns about the possibility of re-infection of COVID-19, although they said larger samples would be needed to explain how immunity to the virus changes over time.
The World Health Organization has said that for some people the virus carries a risk of serious side effects – even among young, otherwise healthy people who have not been hospitalized. To date, there have been more than 89 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, including 1.9 million related deaths and 49.5 million recovered.
‘Patients should be seen over a period of six months or longer due to the complications that the virus incurs. This means that we will have even less capacity and fewer health workers available to treat these individuals, ”Oksana Pyzik, global health adviser and lecturer at UCL, told Al Jazeera.
“It will have consequences for the treatment of all kinds of chronic conditions,” such as cancer, Pyzik said.
Monica Cortinovis, Norberto Perico and Giuseppe Remuzzi of Istituto di Ricerche Pharmacologiche, Mario Negri IRCCS, said in a commentary article, also published in the Lancet, that there is uncertainty about the long-term health consequences of the pandemic.
“Unfortunately, there are few reports on the clinical picture of the aftermath of COVID-19,” they said. The latest study added that it was therefore “relevant and timely”.
They said long-term multidisciplinary research conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom would help improve understanding and develop therapies to mitigate the long-term effects of COVID-19 on multiple organs and tissues.