By Elizabeth Cooney July 17, 2024
Vaccination lowers the chance of developing long Covid, according to a large new study that also found that the risk of serious complications has diminished but not disappeared as new coronavirus variants emerged.
The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, compared the health records of more than 440,000 Veterans Affairs patients who were infected with Covid-19 with records of more than 4 million uninfected people. The analysis found that cases of long Covid — also called PASC (post-acute sequelae of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) — fell among all participants during the Delta and Omicron eras of the pandemic, but dropped almost twice as much for vaccinated people when the Omicron variant dominated cases.
The new data about vaccination’s benefits come during a summer resurgence in Covid cases around the country, and as health officials prepare to roll out a vaccine updated against newer strains that Pfizer and Moderna said they could deliver in August.
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