Occurrence and Persistence of Symptoms, Diagnoses, and Prescriptions After Community-Diagnosed COVID-19: A Matched Cohort Study Using the OpenSAFELY Platform

    March 2026 in “ Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health ”
    Kevin Wing, Caroline E Morton, Viyaasan Mahalingasivam, Ruth Costello, Thomas E. Cowling, Liang-Yu Lin, Peter Inglesby, Alex J Walker, OpenSAFELY Collaborative, The Lh W Ncs Or Convalescence Collaborative, Sebastian Bacon, Amir Mehrkar, Ben Goldacre, Stephen JW. Evans, Ian Douglas, Rosalind M. Eggo, Laurie Tomlinson, Kathryn E. Mansfield
    TLDR Long-COVID symptoms like fatigue, cognitive issues, and mobility problems can last 6-12 months but are less common after milder illness.
    This study analyzed the occurrence and persistence of symptoms, diagnoses, and prescriptions after COVID-19 using data from the OpenSAFELY platform. It included 902,885 COVID-19 cases from wave 2 and 1,553,160 cases from wave 4, matched to millions of comparators. The study found that long-COVID symptoms such as hair loss, mobility impairment, fatigue, cognitive impairment, and loss of taste or smell were more common in wave 2, with some symptoms persisting for 6-12 months. There were also small increases in new prescriptions for NSAIDs, infection treatments, and musculoskeletal drugs. Wave 4 associations were generally weaker, suggesting that long-COVID symptoms and new prescriptions reduce over time and are less problematic after less severe illness. Fatigue, cognitive, and mobility symptoms were noted to persist following COVID-19.
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