Do COVID Vaccines Prevent Long COVID?

A great many people are done with COVID. They have stored masks in drawers or thrown them away. Folks are hanging out with friends and family. They want to forget about the 83 million people who have caught the coronavirus in the US and the 1 million who have died. But most states are now seeing substantial increases in COVID cases. Hospitalizations are also climbing. Hundreds are still dying daily. People who caught COVID or who have been vaccinated and boosted are also catching the latest variant. They may not get deathly ill, but the question on many minds is: will the vaccine prevent long COVID?

How Common Is Long COVID?

Doctors have been blindsided by the number of people who are now suffering from the persistent symptoms of long COVID. Some are calling it the “new” pandemic.

An innovative new study reveals the tip of the iceberg. Doctors and hospitals rely on billing codes to get paid. Every ailment has its own special diagnostic code. Acute appendicitis has the code K35-80. Pneumonia has the code J18.9. Long COVID recently got its own code: U09.9.

Shortly after the long COVID code was introduced researchers started collecting data. Between October 1, 2021 and January 31, 2022 the new investigation reported 78,252 patients “who were diagnosed with the U09.9 code.”

The New York Times (May 18, 2022) did a comprehensive analysis of the study and described it this way:

“Researchers analyzed the largest database of private insurance claims in the United States in the first four months after a diagnostic code for long Covid was created.”

An outside expert told the NYT how serious this problem is:

“Dr. Claire Steves, a clinical academic and physician at King’s College London, who was not involved in the new research, said the overall number of people who received the diagnosis was ‘huge,’ given that the study covered only the first four months after the diagnostic code was introduced and did not include people covered by government health programs like Medicaid or Medicare (though it did include people in private Medicare Advantage plans). ‘That’s probably a drop in the ocean compared to what the real number is,’ Dr. Steves said.”

Are We Prepared for Long COVID?

According to the US Government Accountability Office, anywhere from 7.7 to 23 million Americans may be affected.

Stop! Hit the pause button in your brain. Consider the magnitude of those numbers for more than a nanosecond, please. The health care system is being inundated with patients who are complaining of long-lasting and debilitating symptoms of long COVID. The tide is rising and we have no idea how high it will go. There is no lifeboat…yet.

The FAIR Health White Paper (June 15, 2021) reported that as many as one in five asymptomatic COVID-infected people experienced long hauler symptoms. That may be an underestimate, though.

Investigators from UCLA published their findings in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (April 7, 2022). They report that roughly one in three people who catch COVID-19 can go on to develop PASC (post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2). Here are their conclusions. Pardon us for quoting them directly.

The medicalese is a bit daunting, but the results are startling:

“In this prospective cohort of individuals with COVID-19 infection, 30% of patients developed a subset of symptoms associated with PASC. This large, diverse cohort achieved a longitudinal follow-up of 80% of patients after the acute COVID-19 illness. Studying a diverse population treated in a single health system, we are able to control for factors such as access and quality of care often lacking in existing studies. This health system-based COVID-19 population reveals the startling findings that age, race, and economic disadvantage appear unassociated with development of PASC.”

In other words, you can be healthy, young and in good shape financially and still get long COVID! Is it possible to prevent long COVID? Israeli scientists say vaccines can help (medRxiv, Jan. 17, 2022). Please be patient a bit longer to find out what other researchers are saying about vaccines vs. long COVID.

How Would You Know If You Have Long COVID?

There are no definitive tests for PASC. A blood test won’t prove that you have it. Neither will an MRI or CT scan. You might have trouble breathing, but that in itself is not definitive since many conditions can cause pulmonary problems including asthma or COPD.

Some people complain of insomnia after catching the coronavirus. But tens of millions of American had difficulty sleeping before we even heard of COVID-19. Let’s face it, we live in stressful times. The evening news is scary enough to keep a lot of people from falling asleep.

Then there is brain fog. Do you ever have trouble remembering someone’s name? What about a date or a password? Is that just “normal” forgetting or are you suffering from long COVID? Remember, many people have no idea they caught COVID because they were either asymptomatic or suffered such mild symptoms they barely noticed them.

What’s It Like to Be a Long Hauler?

Researchers have come up with lots of names for long COVID. They include:

• Post-Covid Syndrome (PCS)
• Post-Acute Sequelae SARS-CoV-2 (PASC)
• Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome (PACS)

Whatever you call it, the condition can be life changing! You can listen to our interviews with two health professionals who themselves caught COVID and then became long haulers at this link:

Show 1230: What Happens When COVID Symptoms Don’t Go Away

Here is just a partial list of symptoms:

• Fatigue
• Shortness of breath, cough
• Cognitive difficulties (sometimes called ‘brain fog’)
• Headache
• Numbness/tingling (neuropathy)
• Loss of smell or taste
• Dizziness
• Heart palpitations, rapid pulse
• Chest pain
• Joint or muscle pain
• Insomnia
• Excessive sweating
• Depression, anxiety

You can learn more about what it’s like to have long-haul COVID at this link.

Long Covid Is Common and Scary!
Data from both the UK and the US suggest that many patients recovering from COVID-19 suffer persistent symptoms. Long COVID is nasty!

One long COVID patient told the TV station WTVD in Durham, NC (May 9, 2022):

“I’ve described it almost like being beaten with a baseball bat every single day. The muscles just hurt that bad. On top of that, I deal with muscle spasms and not just what we’ve kind of–we’ve considered normal muscle spasms. If I try to focus on the spasm, I have literally thousands of spasms per minute and that goes on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s just unrelenting.”

The head of the UNC COVID-19 Recovery Clinic told WTVD:

“‘I think it is a developing crisis. Unfortunately, there are probably hundreds of thousands of people in our state who have symptoms,’ said Dr. John Baratta, the director of the COVID-19 Recovery Clinic. ‘Some may just be nuisance symptoms, (but) for certain people it dramatically impacts their ability to do daily activities and to be employed.’

“Baratta said around half of his patients are unable to work. This paired with the cost of treatment leaves many patients suffering mentally, physically and financially months after their initial COVID-19 diagnosis.”

Is It Possible to Prevent Long COVID?

Studies from the UK, Israel and the US have produced different answers to that question. A study from the US Veterans’ Affairs (VA) was based on patient records. Somewhat surprisingly, those investigators concluded that vaccination affords only a modest 13 percent reduction (preprint published by Research Square, Nov. 15, 2021).

However, a study of more than a million Britons using a mobile phone app to report their symptoms indicated that vaccinated people were only half as likely to report persistent problems after infection (Lancet Infectious Diseases, Sept. 1, 2021).

Here are their findings in their own words:

“We found that the odds of having symptoms for 28 days or more after post-vaccination infection were approximately halved by having two vaccine doses. This result suggests that the risk of long COVID is reduced in individuals who have received double vaccination, when additionally considering the already documented reduced risk of infection overall.”

Another UK Study Suggests Vaccines Help Prevent Long COVID:

A study of 28,356 participants in the Office of National Statistics was published in the BMJ on May 18, 2022.

The conclusions:

“We found that vaccination against covid-19 is associated with a decrease in the likelihood of continuing to experience long covid symptoms in adults aged 18 to 69 years, and this appeared to be sustained after a second vaccine dose. Our results suggest that vaccination of people previously infected may be associated with a reduction in the burden of long covid on population health, at least in the first few months after vaccination.”

The Israeli Data:

Israeli researchers also report a benefit from COVID-19 vaccination. Two doses dramatically reduce the risk of developing symptoms of long COVID.

The observational study included more than 3,000 volunteers. One group tested negative for COVID. Another group tested positive, although they had been vaccinated with two Pfizer-BioNTech shots. The third group was unvaccinated and tested positive for the coronavirus. All of these individuals are part of a long-term study.

People who were vaccinated were about 60 percent less likely to experience symptoms such as fatigue, headache, weakness or muscle pain compared to people who were infected but unvaccinated. In fact, people who had received both shots were no more likely to experience lingering symptoms than those who were never infected with COVID-19. These symptoms are relatively common, and not limited to people with long COVID.

How Many People Developed Long COVID in the Israeli Study?

We have already noted that other studies have produced an incidence of long-hauler syndrome after asymptomatic infection with the coronavirus. It ranges from 20 to 30% among people who had no symptoms of COVID-19.

The FAIR Health White Paper from June, 2021, reported that people with mild infections had a 27% incidence of post-COVID problems. Even more worrisome, about 50% of the patients who were hospitalized with COVID developed complications after recovery and discharge.

The Israeli study reported that:

Unvaccinated participants experienced these post COVID symptoms:

• Fatigue = 26%
• Headache = 22%
• Weakness in arms or legs = 16%
• Persistent muscle pain = 11%
• Loss of concentration = 10%
• Problem sleeping = 11%

Consider that in the US over 82 million people have had COVID, and in the world that number stands at over 500 million. If “only” 10% develop long COVID, the health systems will have a terrible time coping. Were that number to reach 20%, it will become a huge problem. If the number turns out to be closer to 30%, it is hard to imagine how health systems will manage.

The Israeli Study’s Conclusions About How to Prevent Long COVID:

“Overall, receipt of two doses of COVID-19 vaccination was associated with a substantial decrease in reporting the most common post-COVID-19 symptoms. Individuals who had received two doses reported no more of these symptoms than never infected individuals. Our results therefore suggest that receiving two doses of COVID-19 vaccine, at least the BnT162b2 mRNA vaccine used in Israel [Pfizer-BioNTech] brings the incidence of such symptoms back to baseline.

The Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine vs. Long COVID:

“This study offers a snapshot of the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine against the long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The findings suggest that in addition to preventing severe disease and death, COVID-19 vaccines, or at least the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine used in Israel, may play a critical role in preventing long-term outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection that fit within the current WHO definition of long COVID, in particular among older adults.”

This research has not yet been peer reviewed and will need to be replicated before we can be sure that COVID vaccinations help prevent long COVID. Until then, however, it is good to know that vaccines might prevent long COVID. As far as we know, no other treatment has been shown to accomplish this outcome.

Will We Be Able to Treat Long COVID?

Physicians do not yet know what the best treatments are for long COVID. The National Institutes of Health have initiated a program called RECOVER to coordinate research on long COVID treatments. It could be years, though, before we have results that will guide health care professionals in their treatment of millions of long haulers.

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If we learn of anything else that has been clearly shown to prevent long COVID or help cure the symptoms of this devastating illness, we will let you know promptly. Please share your own experience in the comment section below.