If a person has a cold, then he has much less chances of catching the coronavirus at the same time.
In some people who have had the flu, fatigue, frequent headaches, shortness of breath and unhealthy agitation persist for a long time. All these conditions are observed sometimes even six months after recovery, follows from data collected by a group of experts at the University of Oxford.
Interest in the topic arose in connection with the phenomenon of “long covid”. It turned out that other viruses can cause similar symptoms.
Statistical analysis covered two groups of 100 thousand people, mainly in the United States. Participants in one of them had had Covid-19, and the other had the usual flu.
In the first group, 42% of patients consulted a doctor about prolonged complications, in the second – 30%.
According to Oxford analysts, this difference is largely due to the fact that people who have suffered from Covid-19 are more worried about their health.
“Many of us know from our own experience that after the flu, the normal state of health does not return longer than we wanted and hoped,” – said one of the leaders of the study, Professor Paul Harrison.
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The material, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, does not contain data on the severity of the identified symptoms and whether they occurred constantly or from time to time.
“Complications from influenza have received little attention so far,” said another study participant, Dr. Max Take.
What is “long covid”
“Long covid” is a rather poorly studied ailment, which still does not have a single definition, nor any well-established list of symptoms. In Britain, for example, this is the name for any case of Covid-19, if four weeks or more after the patient recovers (that is, when the tests stop detecting the virus in his body), he retains at least one of the symptoms of infection.
At the same time, in some, the lingering ailment manifests itself weakly and almost does not cause any inconvenience, while in others it is so exhausting that it deprives a person of the opportunity to return to work, and sometimes to serve himself on his own. Some of the most common complaints are shortness of breath, chronic fatigue, loss of smell or taste; in the most severe cases, the patient may experience severe, sometimes irreversible damage to internal organs. It is also known about cases when sensitivity in the limbs and even vision disappeared in those who had been ill.
From a study last week by the British National Bureau of Statistics, it follows that the danger of “long covid” has been overestimated for a long time: on average, only one in 40 people suffers from it. This is four times less than previously thought. The authors of another study, published in early September in the Lancet, concluded that getting vaccinated against the virus can cut the likelihood of a long-term illness in half.
More often, complications appear in women, people over 50 years old, as well as in those suffering from concomitant chronic ailments and people with an increased concentration of the virus in the blood during the period of illness.
In Russia, the Minister of Health Mikhail Murashko recently spoke about the “long covid”. On August 31, he called on regional authorities to work on the early detection of such patients through in-depth medical examination.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on the last “Direct Line” at the end of June said that the Russian authorities had launched an in-depth rehabilitation program for patients with severe coronavirus. Russians who have had covid disease can undergo an in-depth medical examination under a compulsory medical insurance policy until the end of 2023.
