Many American adults who were hospitalized for COVID-19 experienced lingering symptoms, physical limitations and financial problems six months after being discharged, according to a new study. The study, which was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open, looked at more than 800 adults who were hospitalized for COVID-19 between August 2020 and July 2021.
It found that at the six-month mark, more than 7 in 10 participants reported problems affecting the heart or lungs like coughing, rapid or irregular heartbeat and breathlessness. More than half of survivors reported fatigue after half a year. Notably, rates of heart and lung problems and fatigue increased from one month to six months after hospital discharge, highlighting that new symptoms can develop even after the initial COVID-19 illness is over.
“My clinic patients often want to know how soon they’ll get back to their usual health,” study author Andrew Admon, a pulmonologist at Lieutenant Colonel Charles S. Kettles VA Medical Center, said in a statement. “Based on these data, it seems that many people hospitalized for COVID-19 should expect symptoms to last for up to six months or even longer.” Rates of reported financial problems and physical limitations decreased from the one-month mark to six months after hospitalization but remained high, according to the study.