How frequent is long COVID? And how much protection do vaccines give against it? Why the public and policymakers are grappling with disparate answers to these basic questions
It is the kind of whiplash result that people following long-COVID research have become accustomed to seeing, as data from various studies report discordant results. Differences in how the syndrome is defined, the kinds of data used to study it and how those data are analysed have left both the public and policymakers grappling with disparate answers to basic questions.
So far, there is no agreement on how to define and diagnose long COVID. The World Health Organization’s attempt at a, has not proved popular with patient advocates or researchers, and studies continue to use a range of criteria to define the condition. Estimates of its prevalence can range from 5–50%.
But there are also drawbacks. “People mistake the size of the study with its quality and its validity,” says Walid Gellad, a physician who studies health policy at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.In particular, Gellad worries that studies that rely on electronic health records will be muddied by behavioural differences. For example, compared with someone who does not seek medical care for acute COVID-19, someone who does might be more likely to report long-COVID symptoms, he says.
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