Prolonged COVID: Who can get this stage of the disease?

New research in the UK has shed more light on the characteristics of patients with long-term COVID; this stage of the disease that leaves symptoms for weeks, and even months after having recovered or that do not mean a danger of contagion.

Around 1.3 million people (2% of the population) in the UK have reported having prolonged COVID until December 6 of last year, according to data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS, in English) of the European country, collected by Infobae.

These estimates, says the outlet, are based on the participants who responded to a survey. Symptoms experienced by respondents in this study ranged from fatigue, loss of smell and taste (parosmia), shortness of breath, insomnia, tingling, joint pain, depression and anxiety, chest pain or heart palpitations, among others.

However, something that caught the attention of the researchers is that people who suffered from prolonged COVID they are, almost entirely, women between 35 and 69 years old. The same ones that work in the health sector, social assistance or teaching and education. They also have a pre-existing illness or disability.

According to the data from this study, 64% of the people who self-reported having prolonged COVID noted that the disease affected their daily activities. About 70% said they had confirmed or suspected COVID-19 at least 12 weeks ago, while 40% said they had it at least a year ago.

The new evidence presented by the ONS indicates that women with prolonged COVID experience heart problems in response to physical exertion; limiting their capacity for daily activity.

Doctors Stephen J. Carter and Marissa N. Baranauskas, physiologists at Indiana University in Bloomington, confirmed significant differences in the response of daily activities between women who had COVID-19 and people who were not infected.

“Such alterations have the potential to limit not only exercise tolerance, but also participation in free-living physical activity in women during post-acute recovery from COVID-19″the physicians argued in their research published in The Physiological Society’s journal Experimental Physiology.

Although contagion by COVID-19 in men it is associated with a greater severity in the disease and mortality, other reports suggest that women may be more susceptible to certain limitations related to the lungs long after recovering from the disease.