Omicron Less Likely to Cause Long COVID, According to New Study

The omicron variant of the coronavirus is substantially less likely than the earlier delta variant to cause symptoms of long COVID-19, according to a new study. Researchers in the United Kingdom published a study in The Lancet that finds 4.5 percent of omicron cases resulted in long COVID, compared to 10.8 percent of delta cases. “The Omicron variant appears substantially less likely to cause Long-COVID than previous variants but still 1 in 23 people who catch COVID-19 go on to have symptoms for more than four weeks,” Claire Steves, the study’s lead author and a researcher at King’s College London, said in a statement. In addition, because the omicron variant spreads more easily and infects more people, the total number of long COVID cases was actually higher during the omicron period, the study found.