Abdominal Pain To Myalgia: THESE Long-COVID Symptoms Can Persist In Omicron Patients Post-Recovery

Does it depend on the severity of the infection? Certainly not say, experts. Even a patient who has suffered mild illness due to the Omicron COVID variant can experience these long-COVID complications.

Omicron, the variant which first surfaced in South Africa is now present in over 100 countries and also has some concerning characteristic changes due to several mutations available in its spike protein. The variant carries over 30 mutations which enables it to infect even the fully vaccinated people and thus The World Health Organisation (WHO) has named it the current 'Variant of Concern'. But, apart from leading to high infection rates, the variant can also lead to some of the unusual symptoms which were not there with the previous variants. And not just during the course of the recovery process, but, even post-recovery a patient might experience certain long-COVID symptoms which can make the post-recovery stage for a patient a 'little' extra challenging.

Long-COVID Symptoms You Should Be Aware Of

The current report says that recovered Omicron patients are suffering from more than 50 long-term effects of Covid-19. But the most common symptoms reported by Covid survivors four to 12 weeks after acute infection are:

1. Headache
2. Muscle pain
3. Abdominal pain
4. Extreme fatigue or tiredness
5. Problems in sleeping
6. Not able to concentrate on a particular work or brain fogging

Does it depend on the severity of the infection? Certainly not say, experts. Even a patient who has suffered mild illness due to the Omicron COVID variant can experience these long-COVID complications. Studies have shown that up to one in seven children and young people who caught SARS-CoV-2 may also have symptoms linked to the virus about three months later.

"It is still the COVID virus. The Omicron variant might not be as dangerous as Delta, but the virus is the same and thus leading to long-COVID symptoms is normal. However, it is too early to say anything about the signs that one may experience even after getting fully recovered from the infection. In the acute phase, severe fatigue and myalgia appear to be prominent symptoms, and there might be symptoms of long Covid in a fraction of these individuals," Dr Piyush Goel, Consultant, Pulmonology and Intensive Care, Manipal Hospital told TheHealthSite.com.

In a recent interview with a news channel, top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci stated that even after causing mild illness, people infected with Omicron are likely to suffer from long Covid. "Long Covid can happen no matter what virus variant occurs. There's no evidence that there's any difference between Delta or Beta or now Omicron," Fauci quoted as saying. He further added, "We should always be aware that when people get a symptomatic infection anywhere from 10 to up to 30 plus percent of people will go on to have persistence of symptoms."

(With inputs from Agencies)