Vaccination only modestly reduces long COVID risk: study
US research shows those who were vaccinated were just 15% less likely than unvaccinated patients to develop the chronic illness
The risk of developing long COVID after infection with coronavirus is lower for vaccinated people than for the unvaccinated, but not by much, according to a large study.
The US researchers compared outcomes among nearly 34,000 people who had breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infections after vaccination with Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna to more than 113,000 unvaccinated people who were infected.
The study, conducted when the Delta variant was predominant and published in Nature Medicine, used data from the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
It found vaccination reduced the likelihood of long COVID after infection by only by about 15%.
