Long Covid sufferers more commonly reported heart symptoms such as palpitations or fast heartbeat, as well as pins and needles or numbness, and problems concentrating (‘brain fog’). People with long Covid were also twice as likely to report that their symptoms had come back again after recovering (relapse) compared with those having short Covid (16 percent vs 8.4 percent).
Insights learned so far are being used to make the Covid Symptom Study app better for studying long Covid.
Overall, the team found that while most people with COVID-19 reported being back to normal in 11 days or less, around one in seven (13.3 percent, 558 users) had COVID-19 symptoms lasting for at least four weeks, with around one in 20 (4.5 percent, 189 users) staying ill for eight weeks and one in 50 (2.3 percent, 95 users) suffering for longer than 12 weeks.
These are conservative estimates, which, because of the strict definitions used, may underestimate the extent of Long Covid.