Professor Karina Butler:

An important point regarding long Covid is that some interesting work has shown that, for those who have breakthrough infections post vaccination, they are much less susceptible to being affected by long Covid-type symptoms. The issue with long Covid is that there are a number of different syndromes that are gathered together under it. It covers people who have been very sick in ICU, who have a prolonged rehabilitation time that is very defined. It can take time to recover from the effects on their multi-organ systems, including their kidneys.

There is another group of people who have had quite mild symptoms but who do not return to full health for a time. It can take some weeks or months. Their health status can mainly be characterised by fatigue, brain fog and those kinds of difficult-to-quantify symptoms. Speaking as a paediatrician, the good news is that the risk of that kind of syndrome in children seems to be much lower and, for those who have it, it seems to last for eight to 12 weeks. Some studies have been done on this matter in Italy and Germany and the data coming out from those have been reassuring.