The Mail Plus has an article asking if long COVID will seen less with more people vaccinated and a lower incidence of the virus in the population.
Extracts
A study, of 3,000 people who had contracted Covid, found those given two vaccines were up to 70 per cent less likely to suffer long Covid than unvaccinated people.
A US study of more than 30,000 double-vaccinated people, documented in the journal Nature, found that two jabs reduced the risk of long-term symptoms by a meagre 15 per cent.
‘The whole point of the Covid vaccines is that they train the immune system to find and destroy Covid in your body, so it’s likely that after three jabs the virus is going to find it hard to hide,’ says Dr David Strain, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School. ‘But it is possible that, in small numbers, the virus could still slip past the immune system and remain in the body.’
Dr Strain’s own research shows that the risk of developing the condition after two jabs is now just over nine per cent – the risk of developing it in the unvaccinated is roughly around 14 per cent. These figures follow on from analysis published in February by the UK Health Security Agency showed two vaccine doses reduced the risk of long Covid by about 40 per cent.
‘You’ve got to remember, you are also far less likely to catch Covid in the first place,’ says Dr Strain.
Experts say it is too soon to have exact data on the impact of three jabs on long Covid, but that it is likely to reduce the risk even more.