Vaccines likely to reduce risk of long COVID, experts say, but by how much? – CTV
June 13, 2022
As more details emerge about the long-term effects of COVID-19, experts say vaccination is likely to have protective benefits against long COVID, also known as post-acute sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC). But an important question that has yet to be answered is exactly how much protection it offers.
“The collective evidence is all pointing towards the fact that vaccines are reducing the risk of developing long COVID,” Dr. Kieran Quinn told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview Wednesday. Quinn is a clinician scientist at the University of Toronto and Sinai Health System, leading a large research program studying long COVID.
A study recently published in the Nature Medicine journal discovered that COVID-19 vaccination resulted in a 15 per cent reduction in the risk of developing long COVID. Long COVID is when symptoms of an initial COVID-19 infection persist for longer than about 12 weeks after infection. As part of the study, researchers looked at nearly 34,000 people who experienced breakthrough infections, and compared their data with control groups made up of millions of people. The data was pulled from health-care databases belonging to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.
