Can the vaccinated develop long COVID after recovering from infection

Diana Berrent, founder of Survivor Corps, a Facebook group for people affected by COVID-19 that has about 171,000 members, took an informal poll and found 24 people who said they had lingering symptoms after a breakthrough infection.

It’s not a scientific sample, and the cases haven’t been validated, but the poll shows the need for more data on breakthrough cases, Berrent said.

“You can’t extrapolate it to the general population, but it’s a very strong signal that the CDC needs to be mandating reporting of every breakthrough case,” Berrent said. “We can’t know what we’re not counting.”

But some experts predict the surge of new cases caused by the spread of the Delta variant will, unfortunately, lead to more breakthrough cases in the coming months.

Dr Chen of Mount Sinai said it will take several months before patients with long COVID from a breakthrough infection are enrolled in studies.

“We’re waiting for these patients to show up at our doors,” Dr Chen said.

Despite the lack of data, one thing is clear: Getting vaccinated will reduce the risk of getting infected and getting long COVID, said Athena Akrami, a neuroscientist at University College London, who collected and published data from nearly 4,000 long COVID patients after developing long COVID herself after a March 2020 bout with COVID-19.

“It’s simple math,” said Dr Akrami. “If you reduce infections, then the likelihood of long COVID will drop automatically.”

By Tara Parker-Pope © The New York Times

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/well/live/vaccine-long-covid-breakthrough-infection.html

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