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The “long Covid” affected 4% of adults, or 2.06 million people over the age of 18, a small proportion (1.2%) declaring that they were greatly hampered in their daily activities, underlines a study by Public Health France on Wednesday. made last fall.
This new studyconducted between September and November 2022 (by telephone, then internet) among the adult population in metropolitan France, made it possible to “assess the situation following the large waves of circulation of Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 which followed one another in 2022 and very widely affected the French population“, underlines the agency.
Main lessons: 4% of French adults said they suffered from long Covid at the time of the study. And 1.2% of respondents said a strong or very strong impact on their daily activities.
To characterize the long Covid, the agency uses the WHO definition: symptoms (fatigue, cough, shortness of breath, intermittent fever, loss of taste or smell, depression, etc.) generally within three months after the infection and persisting for at least two months. Symptoms that cannot be explained by other diagnoses and have an impact on daily life.
Among the people declaring to have been infected at least three months ago (48% of the population questioned), 8% presented the criteria for a long Covid with a prevalence twice as high in women (10.2%) as among men (5.3%). Almost a third of them (31%) had had long Covid for more than a year.
Last July, a first study by Public Health France conducted online in the spring of 2022 showed that 4% of French adults and 30% of those who had been infected with Covid said they suffered from long-term Covid disorders.
“Despite the stabilization of the prevalence at the end of 2022, the surveillance of the long Covid (…) is still strongly required in the months to come“, says the agency.
This condition immediately became one of the most common chronic conditions, she adds.