SOME people with long covid, the term for long-lasting symptoms after a covid-19 infection, have had health improvements after being vaccinated against the coronavirus. Reports are based on anecdotes and an informal survey, but may offer clues to the cause of long covid.
For most people, the symptoms of covid-19 clear up within weeks, but some are still ill many months after the infection. It is unclear what causes symptoms such as fatigue and trouble concentrating to persist.
People with long covid have expressed fears in support groups that getting the vaccine will worsen symptoms, says Gez Medinger, who began making YouTube videos about long covid after developing it himself. “People are very anxious about it,” he says. Medinger carried out a survey using Facebook groups of 473 people with long covid who had received a first dose of vaccine.
Most felt “moderately unwell” for the first two days after having the jab. After two weeks, about half were back to feeling the same as they did before the vaccine. Some took a turn for the worse, with 4 per cent saying they had a relapse of symptoms. Another 14 per cent said they felt slightly worse than before the vaccine. But 32 per cent said they either felt better or were totally recovered.
32% Proportion of people with long covid who felt better after being vaccinated
“Taking the vaccine is more likely to completely resolve your symptoms than make you feel much worse,” says Medinger. Most of the respondents were from the UK or US. Sixty per cent had the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, 30 per cent got the Oxford/AstraZeneca one and the rest had the vaccine from Moderna.
“By giving a vaccine, you could enhance the immune response in those who would otherwise continue to have virus lurking in sites within the body and this would lead to its elimination,” says Peter Openshaw at Imperial College London. But he adds that it is too soon to conclude that the vaccine definitely helps people recover and that a formal study is needed.