People Who Are Vaccinated and Get COVID-19 Are Half as Likely to Have Long-Term Symptoms

• A new study finds that vaccinated people who get a breakthrough case of COVID-19 have a 49 percent lower risk of developing long-haul COVID-19.
• Symptoms of long-haul COVID-19 can last weeks to months or even longer. They include brain fog, fatigue, persistent loss of smell or taste, hair loss, and numbness.
• Some people who had mild cases of COVID-19 still end up with symptoms of long-haul COVID-19. This new study finds breakthrough cases are less likely to lead to long-haul COVID-19.

COVID-19 can cause severe illness, sometimes leading to hospitalization and death. But even for people who had mild symptoms, some people have been left with long-term symptoms, now called long-haul COVID-19, or “long COVID.”

“Long COVID is the syndrome of persistent symptoms that develops after the virus that causes COVID has been cleared,” Thomas Gut, DO, associate chair of medicine and director of the Post-COVID Recovery Center at Staten Island University Hospital in New York, told Healthline.

Gut said symptoms can last weeks to months and include brain fog, fatigue, persistent loss of smell or taste, hair loss, and numbness.

With the rise of vaccinations, health experts have been trying to determine whether people who get breakthrough infections would be at the same risk of developing long-haul COVID-19 as unvaccinated people.

A new study published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases on Sept. 1 finds vaccination not only reduces the risk of infection and severe symptoms, but significantly cuts the odds of experiencing long-term effects if you’re one of the few who experience a breakthrough infection.