Long-term effects of COVID19
Many dashboards are reporting the number of people that have "recovered" from COVID19. "Recovered" means "not dead" in the majority of reporting systems. This does NOT necessarily mean "back to normal".
We are starting to see the long-term effects of COVID19 on survivors. We (certainly I) have been anxiously waiting for peer-reviewed data to be published. We are in luck, because one was published yesterday in JAMA. This was a small sample of hospitalizations in Italy, but still has very important implications (and is a fantastic first step).
The figure I created describes the study using data from the manuscript. Important take-aways:
-After 60 days, ONLY 13% of hospitalized patients fully recovered (meaning not having one symptom)
-The majority of patients had 3+ more symptoms 60 days after their COVID19 infection and after 47 days of being in the hospital
-Almost half of the hospitalized patients reported a WORSE quality of life
-Almost half of the hospitalized patients were still having a hard time breathing
While CFR is holding steady (actually we are starting to see an uptick- that's for another post), cases are increasing. Decreased deaths is fantastic. However, this isn't the whole story.
Love, your local epidemiologist
Data Source: Carfi A, Bernabei R, Landi F. Persistent symptoms in patients after acute COVID19. (2020). JAMA. which can be found here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768351