--- title: Largest Study of Lingering COVID-19 Effects Suggests at Looming Problem description: Researchers in China followed COVID-19 patients’ health for up to a year to understand the disease’s long term effects canonical: https://time.com/6093164/long-covid-19-largest-study/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-08-26T22:30:09.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:53.765Z article:section: Health og:title: Largest Study of Lingering COVID-19 Effects Hints at Looming Problem og:description: Researchers in China followed COVID-19 patients’ health for up to a year to understand the disease’s long term effects og:url: https://time.com/6093164/long-covid-19-largest-study/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba16f337acb82c5d/698a1c4f22fb852653e2c7a4/GettyImages-1250589447.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2121 og:image:height: 1193 og:image:alt: Woman balancing on columns amidst coronavirus og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Largest Study of Lingering COVID-19 Effects Hints at Looming Problem twitter:description: Researchers in China followed COVID-19 patients’ health for up to a year to understand the disease’s long term effects twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba16f337acb82c5d/698a1c4f22fb852653e2c7a4/GettyImages-1250589447.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Largest Study of Lingering COVID-19 Effects Suggests a Looming Problem > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Why the White House Is Moving Ahead With COVID-19 Boosters [Watch (HLS stream): Why the White House Is Moving Ahead With COVID-19 Boosters](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/RLcneSjW.m3u8) (2:02)  _Published 2021-08-18. On Aug. 18, the White House endorsed a third dose for those who received either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. People who received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine may also need an additional dose, but the relevant studies are still ongoing. For now, the government plans on rolling out Pfizer and Moderna booster doses the week of Sept. 20, beginning with people who received their last dose eight months earlier._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Aug 26, 2021 10:30 PM UTC  Young woman balancing herself on large green columns amidst coronavirus against white background Young woman balancing herself on large green columns amidst coronavirus against white background Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Aug 26, 2021 10:30 PM UTC In the largest long-term [study](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2821%2901755-4/fulltext) of COVID-19 patients yet to be published, researchers in China report in the _Lancet_ worrying results of the disease’s lingering impact on people’s health. The scientists, led by Dr. Bin Cao from the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing, studied 1,276 people discharged between January to May 2020 from Jin Yin-Tan Hospital in Wuhan after being hospitalized for COVID-19\. The patients all agreed to health visits at six and 12 months after their symptoms first appeared; at each of those points, the researchers compared the health status of the study participants with that of comparable people from the Wuhan area who did not experience COVID-19 infection. Among those hospitalized for COVID-19, 68% reported at least one continued, COVID-19-related symptom six months after their first symptoms appeared. While this percentage decreased by the 12-month mark, it remained relatively high, at 49%. And overall, patients who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 self-reported being in poorer health and having lower quality of life—including mobility issues— compared to controls. The most common symptom patients reported 12 months later was fatigue or muscle weakness; other issues included sleep disturbances, changes in taste and smell, dizziness, headache and shortness of breath. Certain symptoms were actually worse at the 12-month mark than they were earlier on in the study: the proportion of patients reporting breathing problems increased slightly, from 26% to 30%, from six months to a year following their first symptoms. The patients also filled out questionnaires about their mental health, and while 23% reported feeling anxious or depressed six months after their first symptoms appeared, 30% did so at a year. The findings highlight the complicated nature of COVID-19’s effects on people’s health, and the range of longer-term consequences emerging in what some experts are referring to as [Long COVID](https://time.com/5946101/long-covid-caregivers/). This recent study is the largest to date of such extended effects among hospitalized patients; while it suggests that about half of patients with serious COVID-19 recover from their symptoms, the other half—and especially those who were sicker during their hospitalization—may continue to battle the mental and physical effects of the virus for over a year. “I would not say this is a glass-half-full story,” says David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health Systems who oversees the network’s Long COVID rehabilitation program. “After most hospital stays, including for, say, walking pneumonia, I would not be expecting people at 12 months to still be reporting symptoms to me.” The increase in the proportion of patients experiencing anxiety or depression is especially “worrying,” say the authors, and they speculate that in addition to the isolation, unemployment, and loss of physical health that could be fueling these conditions, the virus itself may be driving abnormal immune responses that could affect the delicate work of brain chemicals contributing to people’s mental states. “Taken together, the implications are that people with persistent COVID-19 symptoms are looking at a long recovery,” says Putrino. At Mount Sinai’s Long COVID program that involves a personalized approach to addressing patients’ diverse symptoms, which could range from kidney, heart and lung problems to generalized fatigue and muscle weakness. For the latter, rehabilitation might include a tedious process of gradually stimulating the autonomic nervous system with carefully supervised exercises to slowly stimulate normal nerve activation, which could take as long as three to four months before patients feel better. “This virus doesn’t end once you get discharged from the hospital or once you get over the initial acute symptoms,” says Putrino. “This virus persists.” He notes that while the recent _Lancet_ study only focused on hospitalized COVID-19 patients, other, albeit smaller, studies have shown that COVID-19 symptoms may linger in around 20% of those who get infected but don’t get sick enough to go to the hospital. That means the issue of persistent COVID-19 symptoms looms over any post-COVID-19 public health plan; currently, there isn’t much clarity about whether, or how much, insurers will cover rehabilitation for these patients. And that’s if patients know of and can access these services to begin with. “It’s the tip of the iceberg of enormous potential inequity and disparities in health,” says Putrino. “Most persistent symptoms are invisible symptoms, and walking into a doctor’s office and saying you have extreme fatigue”—a symptom many COVID-19 sufferers have reported experiencing months after infection—”\[only\] gets treated seriously when you’re not a member of a historically excluded group. And when you are, in many cases you don’t bother to even go to the doctor’s office because who is going to believe you?” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6093164/long-covid-19-largest-study/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6093164/long-covid-19-largest-study/"},"headline":"Largest Study of Lingering COVID-19 Effects Suggests a Looming Problem","datePublished":"2021-08-26T22:30:09.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:51:53.765Z","description":"Researchers in China followed COVID-19 patients’ health for up to a year to understand the disease’s long term effects","url":"https://time.com/6093164/long-covid-19-largest-study/","keywords":["COVID-19","embargoed study","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba16f337acb82c5d/698a1c4f22fb852653e2c7a4/GettyImages-1250589447.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba16f337acb82c5d/698a1c4f22fb852653e2c7a4/GettyImages-1250589447.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Woman balancing on columns amidst coronavirus","caption":"Woman balancing on columns amidst coronavirus","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/covid-19/","name":"COVID-19"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6093164/long-covid-19-largest-study/","name":"Largest Study of Lingering COVID-19 Effects Suggests a Looming Problem"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"A Year With Long COVID: \"It’s hard to remember when it was different\"","description":"A year into the pandemic, Long COVID is still burdening patients—and their caregivers","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/5CFyBeWG/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2021-03-13T13:53:51.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/5CFyBeWG.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6093164/long-covid-19-largest-study/","duration":"PT9M27S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6093164/long-covid-19-largest-study/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Why the White House Is Moving Ahead With COVID-19 Boosters","description":"On Aug. 18, the White House endorsed a third dose for those who received either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. 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