Self-reported data from nearly 100,000 people in the UK indicate that COVID-19 cases caused by the Delta variant were 2.4 times more likely to result in long COVID than those caused by Omicron. The research, published online yesterday (June 16) as a letter in The Lancet, claims to be the first large-scale study to examine the risk of developing long COVID from an Omicron infection.
The data came from the COVID Symptom Study app, which is run by King’s College London researchers and allows people to report symptoms and test results. In all, the researchers obtained data from 56,003 people who tested positive for COVID-19 during the Omicron wave (defined by the researchers as December 20, 2021–March 9, 2022) and 41,361 who tested positive during the Delta wave (June 1, 2021–November 27, 2021). Participants were considered to have long COVID if they reported symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog, or ...
