Being vaccinated against Covid-19 consistently reduces the risk of suffering from long Covid symptoms if you then get an infection from the virus, research has suggested.
A study funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has found that vaccination against Covid-19 consistently reduced the risk of lingering long-term symptoms.
Researchers from the University of Oxford and Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology, and Musculoskeletal Sciences (NDORMS) examined data from more than 20 million people from the UK, Spain and Estonia. Some had been vaccinated and others had not.
People were defined as having long Covid if they had experienced at least one of 25 WHO-listed symptoms between 90 and 365 days after the date of a positive PCR test or clinical diagnosis of the virus, or had no history of that symptom 180 days before they were infected with Covid-19.
The research team observed a “significant” decrease in the occurrence among vaccinated individuals, in the study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. This was in comparison to those who were unvaccinated.
The findings were consistent across all three European countries and four databases, covering different healthcare settings and national healthcare policies.
Dani Prieto-Alhambra, professor of pharmaco and device epidemiology at NDORMS and an NIHR senior research investigator, led the study.
He said: “Vaccines proved to be highly effective in preventing severe Covid-19 but it’s known that around one in 10 people suffer from persistent symptoms, what we call long Covid.”
Dr Annika Jodicke, senior pharmacoepidemiologist and study co-lead, added: “We were able to demonstrate how the vaccines prevented the development of persistent Covid symptoms. Additionally, we compared different vaccinations and found that the BNT162b2 vaccine (BioNTech/Pfizer) provided better protection against long Covid compared to the ChAdOx1 vaccine (Oxford/AstraZeneca).”
This winter’s virus vaccination programme in the UK was more limited to that of the winter of 2022, when all over-50s were invited to come forward to get vaccinated.
The study has emerged from £19.5m of funding the NIHR awarded to 15 projects across England during 2021 to explore causes of long Covid, symptoms and treatments.
It also chimes with research conducted in 2022 by the UK Health Security Agency and more anecdotal evidence from around the time of the first vaccine rollout that vaccination could have to alleviate some of the symptoms, even if just temporarily.
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