Research finds 75 per cent of patients hospitalised with Covid don’t feel recovered after a year

Queensland has recorded more than 4600 new cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, with 478 people in hospital. It comes as new global research shows just one in four patients hospitalised with the virus feel fully recovered after a year.

Queensland has recorded 4639 new cases of Covid-19 overnight and two deaths.

The state now has 46,828 active cases, including 478 people in hospital and 12 in the ICU.

There are also now 93.61 per cent of Queenslanders with the first dose of the vaccine and 92.04 per cent who are fully vaccinated. 

It comes as shocking new research reveals three quarters of people who’ve been hospitalised with Covid-19 are suffering from long-Covid symptoms and don’t feel fully recovered a full year later.

A study from the University of Leicester in the UK looked into the effects of long-Covid on a cohort of 2320 patients who tested positive to the virus and were hospitalised.

It found that only one in four patients felt fully recovered a year after testing positive, with the most common long-Covid symptoms being fatigue, muscle pain, physically slowing down, poor sleep and breathlessness.

Being a woman, having obesity and having had mechanical ventilation in hospital were all also linked to being less likely to feel recovered after a year.

Leading researcher Dr Rachael Evans said the limited recovery in symptoms, mental health, exercise capacity, organ impairment and quality of life was “striking”.

“In our clusters, female sex and obesity were also associated with more severe ongoing health impairments including reduced exercise performance and health-related quality of life at one year, potentially highlighting a group that might need higher intensity interventions such as supervised rehabilitation,” she said.