The prevalence of so-called “long COVID” is “exaggerated” and its incidence is “much lower than people expected,” said a leading UK medical expert.
Professor Sir John Bell, a professor of Regius Medicine at Oxford University, spoke with Times Radio on Thursday, saying: Much lower than people expected. “
He commented after official data released last week suggested that long COVIDs in the UK were far less common than previously estimated.
Only 3% of people who tested positive for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus showed symptoms that lasted more than 12 weeks, according to the latest information released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on September 16. ONS’s previous estimate released in April (13.7 percent).
ONS, the result is “reliefThe majority of people infected with COVID-19 do not experience symptoms for more than the first 12 weeks, and some who do experience feel better over time.
But “for a few people who continue to experience long-term symptoms, the effects can be debilitating,” he said.
Bell also said in an interview with Times Radio that COVID-19 could resemble a cold by next spring, as vaccines and exposures boost people’s immunity to the virus.
“Looking at the trajectory we’re on, it’s much better than it was six months ago,” he said. “Looking at the deaths from COVID, they tend to be very elderly and it is not entirely clear whether it was COVID that caused all those deaths.”
The country has “overcame the worst,” he said, “should be okay” after winter, adding that even vaccinated people continued to be exposed to the virus.
Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, who led to the development of the Oxford / AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, told the Royal Medical Society webinar Wednesday that the virus tends to weaken as it spreads.
“We usually find that the virus is more circulatory and less pathogenic. There is no reason to think that there is a more pathogenic version of Sars-CoV-2,” she said.
“We tend to see slow genetic drift of the virus, and like all other seasonal coronaviruses, the population will gradually develop immunity.”
PA contributed to this report.
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