This illustration shows a test tube labeled “COVID-19 Test Positive” on March 10, 2021. REUTERS / Dado Ruvic / Illustration
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June 22 (Reuters) – Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. adults who reported having COVID-19 in the past still have symptoms of long-term COVID, according to survey data collected during the first two weeks of June. U.S. health officials said Wednesday.
Overall, 1 in 13 adults in the United States has long-term symptoms of COVID that last three months or more after first getting the disease and did not have it before the infection, the data showed.
Data were collected June 1-13 by the U.S. Census Bureau and analyzed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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Long-term symptoms of COVID range from fatigue, rapid heartbeat, difficulty breathing, cognitive difficulties, chronic pain, sensory abnormalities, and muscle weakness. They can be debilitating and last for weeks or months after recovery from the initial infection.
CDC analysis also found that younger adults were more likely to have persistent symptoms than older adults.
According to the study, women were also more likely to have long COVID than men, with 9.4% of American adult women reporting long-term symptoms of COVID compared with 5.5% of men. .
The survey found that nearly 9% of Hispanic adults have long COVID, higher than non-Hispanic black and white adults, and more than twice as many as non-Hispanic Asian adults.
There were also differences across U.S. states, with Kentucky and Alabama reporting the highest percentage of adults with long-term symptoms of COVID, while Hawaii, Maryland, and Virginia reported the lowest, according to the survey.
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Report by Amruta Khandekar; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta
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