The examine by Queensland Health checked out greater than 5000 Queenslanders who had respiratory sickness signs from late May to late June 2022, when the Omicron variant had unfold throughout the state.
Just beneath half of these examined constructive for COVID-19 on a PCR check, whereas of the 2713 who examined detrimental, slightly below 1000 have been confirmed to have influenza.
The examine discovered lengthy COVID is a syndrome “indistinguishable from seasonal influenza and other respiratory illnesses, with no evidence of increased moderate-to-severe functional limitations a year after infection”, the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) stated.
The findings can be offered at subsequent month’s congress in Spain.
“The analysis found no evidence that COVID-19-positive adults were more likely to have moderate-to-severe functional limitations a year after their diagnosis than symptomatic adults who were negative for COVID-19 (3.0 per cent vs 4.1 per cent),” the ECCMID stated.
“Moreover, results were similar when compared with the 995 symptomatic adults who had influenza (3.0 per cent vs 3.4 per cent).”
Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrard stated the quantity of consideration on lengthy COVID signs was merely all the way down to the excessive stage of the virus all through the group.
“In health systems with highly vaccinated populations, long COVID may have appeared to be a distinct and severe illness because of high volumes of COVID-19 cases during the pandemic,” he stated.
“However, we found that the rates of ongoing symptoms and functional impairment are indistinguishable from other post-viral illnesses.
“These findings underscore the significance of evaluating post-COVID-19 outcomes with these following different respiratory infections, and of additional analysis into post-viral syndromes.”
He said the findings meant it was time to stop saying “lengthy COVID”.
“We imagine it’s time to cease utilizing phrases like ‘lengthy COVID’,” he said.
“They wrongly indicate there’s something distinctive and distinctive about longer-term signs related to this virus.
“This terminology can cause unnecessary fear, and in some cases, hypervigilance to longer symptoms that can impede recovery.”
While many different specialists within the subject have welcomed the examine, not all are satisfied it is time to abandon the time period.
“There are likely reasons why persistent symptoms following COVID in this Queensland cohort may be no more frequent than following other viruses including the predominantly vaccinated cohort and the high frequency of Omicron variants,” paediatric infectious illnesses doctor Professor Philip Britton stated.
“These factors are acknowledged by the authors.
“It is due to these particular elements in addition to inherent limitations of the examine methodology itself, that their conclusion that it’s ‘time to cease utilizing phrases like “long COVID”‘ is overstated and probably unhelpful.
“Long COVID has been a global phenomenon, recognised by the World Health Organisation.”
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Professor Jeremy Nicholson, the director of the Australian National Phenome Center at Murdoch University, agrees.
“The absence of evidence is different from evidence of absence,” he stated.
“So the authors’ assertion that long COVID is the same as flu-related post-viral syndrome is not proven, even if long COVID is indeed a post-viral syndrome (which it is).
“What is actually true is that the pandemic nature of COVID-19 created an enormous quantity (thousands and thousands of individuals worldwide) of lengthy COVID victims and that this has drawn consideration to the issue and given it a reputation.
“But we still do not know whether long COVID is physiologically or mechanistically different to other post-viral syndromes, we lack the evidence because it has not been studied properly to date…
“Until that is resolved, we should always nonetheless use the lengthy COVID time period as a result of it pinpoints precisely the underlying viral trigger.”
Source: www.9news.com.au
