Months and months ago, when COVID-19 first broke, one of the most concerning aspects of the disease was the possibility that it might produce long-term chronic fatigue, based on a comparison with SARS (apparently a large percentage of the people who had SARS in 2003, had chronic fatigue symptoms years later, though I can’t find the paper right now), plus some other evidence. At the time, we didn’t have much data, but now we’re a few months into the pandemic. Obviously, we won’t know how long lasting it is, but what are the updated risk estimates of chronic fatigue from COVID?
Anecdotal evidence suggests that it is fairly common: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19positive/ -- 2 of the 5 top posts from today are from people complaining about experiencing this, and are both full of comments personally relating to it. There is obviously going to be a selection bias here, but it seems like a good starting point for estimating a lower bound if you can’t find enough good studies.
This study finds about a third of patients self-report fatigue at 2-3 weeks after a positive coronavirus test. That might be a reasonable generous upper bound for the likelihood of chronic fatigue, though I wouldn’t trust telephone studies of self-reported symptoms all that much.
Comment
Fatigue that lasts 2-3 weeks after the worst symptoms are over is common with essentially all bad viral infections—post-flu fatigue is common for example (can’t find any good statistics on how common). So, I don’t know if 1⁄3 reporting fatigue 2 to 3 weeks after tells us anything useful about how common post-covid fatigue lasting months afterwards is
These are patients who had a positive test in April. Most infected people without symptoms or with mild symptoms did get tested in April in the US. We know about 20-40% are asymptomatic, with higher % among younger people. So actual rate based on this study would be upper bounded by 1⁄4 (not 1⁄3) and point estimate closer to 1⁄5. (I also agree with SDM).
From a Nature news article last week: One study> 7of 143 people with COVID-19 discharged from a hospital in Rome found that 53% had reported fatigue and 43% had shortness of breath an average of 2 months after their symptoms started. A study of patients in China showed that 25% had abnormal lung function after 3 months, and that 16% were still fatigued8.
https://institute.global/policy/long-covid-reviewing-science-and-assessing-risk From the COVID Symptom Study in the UK (app based questionaire), "10 per cent of those taking part in the survey had symptoms of long Covid for a month, with between 1.5 and 2 per cent still experiencing them after three months", and they claim "long Covid is likely a bigger issue than excess deaths as a result of Covid, which are between 0.5 per cent and 1 per cent". App-based survey, so not necessarily representative of population. Not clear how severe the 3 month cases are, though they state "The most common reported symptom has been described by doctors as "profound fatigue"". Article also summarizes other related studies.