Does vaccination prevent chronic COVID-19 symptoms?

Data from multiple COVID-19 vaccines reveal that shots protect against hospitalization and death, which are the most serious consequences of the disease. However, it remains unclear how much the vaccine will reduce the risk of chronic and long-term symptoms. But important COVID-19 Number of patients.

“That’s a very important question that we don’t know the answer to,” says Timothy Henrich, a virologist and viral immunologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Long-term impact Of illness.

The various COVID-19 vaccines tested to date, including those manufactured by Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech, and Novavax, are all highly consistent in near-perfect protection against hospitalization and death. These vaccines can relieve pressure on the healthcare system and delay the overwhelming aggregation of COVID-19 deaths.

However, the vaccine does not completely prevent you from getting sick with COVID-19. They turned what might have been some serious cases of the disease into mild cases-a big win for public health-a few people in clinical trials were still ill. Moreover, it is not yet clear whether the vaccine can completely stop the infection of the virus or primarily make people asymptomatic.

Scientists do not know if a subdued case of illness in a vaccinated person is sufficient to cause persistent symptoms. “I think it’s likely,” says Priya Dugal, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist who is also studying the long-term symptoms of COVID-19. Many people who experience chronic symptoms did not get serious illness during the initial infection. “They aren’t necessarily inpatients. In the early stages, they are often asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic,” Duggal said.

Researchers still do not fully understand long-haul carriers as a whole. Symptoms vary. Some people have changed tastes and odors, while others have a consistent fever and are short of breath for several months. It is also unknown why these symptoms persist after the acute phase of infection.

“There may be several different mechanisms that cause this,” says Henrich.

One theory is that the long-haul carrier’s immune system was unable to completely wipe out the virus during the initial infection. The person is no longer infectious, but the virus or fragments of the virus may remain in the body, causing damage. In that case, vaccination may not cause it, said Aaron Ring, an immunologist at Yale University School of Medicine. “This is all a hypothesis, but vaccines that can boost a highly effective immune response may promote more complete viral clearance,” he says. “Theoretically, if it is a mechanism, it can help prevent some of those symptoms.”

If so It’s not Mechanisms, vaccines may have few direct routes to prevent those symptoms. Infections can stimulate the immune system to attack the body, or the virus that slips through can damage organs and take longer to heal. If someone has been vaccinated and still has a mild illness, in theory the virus can do it. “Does the vaccine interfere with it, or does the vaccine interfere with it? It’s not known,” says Duggal.

Duggal and Heinrich hope to find an answer to the relationship between vaccination and long-haul carriers through a study of COVID-19 patients. Duggal is conducting a survey of 25,000 people with the disease and includes questions asking if they have been vaccinated or are participating in a vaccine trial.

Heinrich and his team have long-term follow-up of people with persistent symptoms. “I’m looking for someone who has been vaccinated and infected,” he says.

Duggal does not know if the vaccine will completely reduce the risk of persistent symptoms. “I think very few people can get infected and become long-haul carriers even after vaccination,” she says.

For clarity, it is unlikely that a vaccination will be created by converting a severe case of COVID-19 to a mild case. More Jessica Dyne, a lung specialist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, says long-haul carriers. “That’s not what we usually observe with other vaccines,” she says. “If you’re vaccinated against the flu, you’ll have mild cases, but you can get the flu. But you don’t see any increase in things like inflammation after a viral infection.”

Dine’s best guess is that as more people get vaccinated, fewer people will have long-term symptoms. Currently, the proportion of people infected with COVID-19 and showing long-term symptoms is quite high. 10%, others are higher. Duggal also hopes that vaccination can reduce that number. “If people are vaccinated, can we reduce that number to 1-5 percent? Can we lower it? Hope it is,” she says. “I don’t know, but I hope the number of people will decrease.”

Meanwhile, researchers emphasize that vaccines have a clear way to reduce the number of long-haul carriers: by reducing the number of infections throughout the population. “The more people are vaccinated, the less virus circulates,” says Duggal. That is, fewer people get sick and fewer people experience long-term symptoms.

“People have to be vaccinated if we try to reach this mountain of herd immunity,” she says. “If I can do that, I will protect myself.”