In 2022, the state of Queensland in Australia experienced an ‘Omicron wave’ – which is like the flu. During this event, it showed that Long COVID (a type of virus) has the power to heavily strain health systems – not because it’s a strong virus, but because lots and lots of people were affected by it.
Research presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) suggests that in Queensland, where people are vaccinated against diseases, getting long COVID is no worse than getting a regular cold or flu.
A study conducted by Queensland Health tells us that while COVID-19 and the Flu have similar health effects, it’s the amount of people who have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus that will really affect public health resources, rather than how serious long COVID symptoms are.
Long Covid is an illness that a person can get after they have had COVID-19. It causes symptoms that can last between 4 and 12 weeks, and even longer in some cases. This condition has serious consequences, including higher healthcare costs, economic losses, and a drop in productivity.
About 1 in 10 people who get sick with COVID-19 might experience long covid, which is when symptoms last more than 3 months. The most common problems include feeling tired a lot, coughing and having trouble breathing, heart racing or pounding in your chest, headaches, and being very exhausted.
Researchers in Queensland, Australia investigated how long COVID may affect people. To do this, they asked adults (adults who are 18 years old and up) who had tested positive for COVID-19 and influenza between June 12th and 25th 2022.
The Queensland Department of Health collects information about people who have tested positive for either COVID-19 or the flu. This means they know when these illnesses are active in the community.
When the Omicron strain of COVID-19 started to be shared more widely around 2022, almost all of the people in Queensland had already been vaccinated against it.
In the middle of 2022, a lot of adults became sick with two diseases at once – Omicron and influenza. 2,195 adults were diagnosed with Omicron and 951 adults were found to have influenza. They were followed for 12 weeks and asked how they felt using a special questionnaire that was sent by phone.
Out of all the people who had Omicron, 1 out of 5 (21%, 469) still reported feeling bad after 12 weeks. Also, 4% (90) said that they had problems carrying out everyday activities.
23% of adults, or 214 people, who were diagnosed with the flu still had symptoms. Another 4%, which means 42 people, said that their flu symptoms were severe and stopped them from doing things as usual.
Researchers looked at many factors – like age, gender, if people were vaccinated or from a First Nation community and where they lived – that might have an impact when looking at adults with the flu-like virus called Omicron. After studying these things, it was discovered that there wasn’t any difference between those who had Omicron and those who got Influenza in terms of having long-term symptoms or being severely affected after 12 weeks.
Research suggests that younger people and those who are not Indigenous are more likely to suffer from long-lasting effects after getting the flu than Omicron people.
According to Dr. John Gerrard, the Chief Health Officer of Queensland, this is mainly due to a large number of people catching the virus within a short time span and not because of anything unique about SARS-CoV-2.
The researchers of this study have uncovered some important things, but they also mentioned two main limitations: it can’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship and it also can’t take other factors (such as underlying illnesses or vaccination status) into consideration. They said there is evidence that the danger of long COVID has been lower during the Omicron wave compared to earlier versions of the virus. A lot of people in Queensland had gotten their vaccines around the same time when the Omicron variant appeared, so that may be why this wave was less intense than before.
This article is all about “Long COVID in Australia”. To understand this topic, experts looked at the information from European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) annual meeting and wrote a summary which can be found on the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare website (aihw.gov.au). The material has been studied closely by a group of experts as part of the congress selection committee before it was made public. The same content is currently being tested by another group of experts to see if it’s suitable for publishing in a scholarly journal.
