Post-viral symptoms and conditions are more frequent in COVID-19 than influenza, but not more persistent

Abstract

Abstract Post-viral symptoms have long been known in the medical community but have received more public attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many post-viral symptoms were reported as particularly frequent after SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, there is still a lack of evidence regarding the specificity, frequency and persistence of these symptoms in comparison to other viral infectious diseases such as Influenza. We addressed this topic by investigating a large population-based cohort based on German routine healthcare data. We matched 573,791 individuals with a PCR-test confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection from the year 2020 to contemporary controls without SARS-CoV-2 infection and controls from the last Influenza outbreak in 2018 and followed them up to 18 months. We found that post-viral symptoms as defined for COVID-19 by the WHO as well as tissue damage were more frequent among the COVID-19 cohort than the Influenza cohort. Persistence of post-viral symptoms was however similar between COVID-19 and Influenza. We conclude that post-viral symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection constitute a substantial disease burden as they are frequent and often persist for many months. As COVID-19 is becoming endemic, the disease must not be trivialized. Research should focus on the development of effective treatments for post-viral symptoms.