One of Australia’s leading doctors wants everyone to stop using the term “long COVID” after a new study found the long-term effects of the coronavirus are no different to those of other viruses like the flu.
The study by Queensland Health looked at more than 5000 Queenslanders who had respiratory illness symptoms from late May to late June 2022, when the Omicron variant had spread across the state.
Just under half of those tested positive for COVID-19 on a PCR test, while of the 2713 who tested negative, just under 1000 were confirmed to have influenza.
The study found long 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) said.
The findings will be presented at next 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 said.
“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 said the amount of attention on long COVID symptoms was simply down to the high level of the virus throughout the community.
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 said.
“However, we found that the rates of ongoing symptoms and functional impairment are indistinguishable from other post-viral illnesses.
“These findings underscore the importance of comparing post-COVID-19 outcomes with those following other respiratory infections, and of further research into post-viral syndromes.”
He said the findings meant it was time to stop saying “long COVID”.
“We believe it is time to stop using terms like ‘long COVID’,” he said.
“They wrongly imply there is something unique and exceptional about longer-term symptoms associated with this virus.
“This terminology can cause unnecessary fear, and in some cases, hypervigilance to longer symptoms that can impede recovery.”
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