Prevalence and Characterization of Long Covid-19 Symptoms in Health Care Professionals: A Need of the Hour
April 2023
in “
Research Square (Research Square)
”
TLDR Many healthcare workers who had Covid-19 suffer from long-term symptoms like hair loss and fatigue, especially women.
The study assessed the prevalence of long Covid-19 symptoms in 328 healthcare professionals aged 18-65, with a gender distribution of 67.7% female and 32.3% male. It found that 60.3% of participants contracted Covid-19 before receiving their first vaccine dose, which decreased to 17.5% post-vaccination. The most common post-Covid complications included hair loss (35.4%), fatigue (25%), mood swings (22.9%), anxiety (18.8%), insomnia (13.9%), depression (12.5%), and joint pains (11.8%). Other symptoms reported were loss of taste, lightheadedness, memory loss, smell loss, gastritis, palpitations, pulmonary complications, and chest pain. The study highlighted that females experienced more post-Covid symptoms than males, except for chest pain and anxiety. The findings suggest that 57% of Covid-19 affected healthcare workers experience post-Covid complications, indicating a need for a unified definition of long Covid and further research to understand its risk factors and mechanisms to prevent such complications.
