The Covid vaccines, while holding up strong against hospitalization and death, offer little protection against long Covid, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature Medicine.

The findings are disappointing, if not surprising, to researchers who were once hopeful that vaccination could significantly reduce the risk of long Covid. Compared to an unvaccinated individual, the risk of long Covid in a fully vaccinated individual was cut by only about 15 percent, the study found.

“The vaccines are miraculous at doing what they were designed to do” — that is, prevent hospitalization and death, said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and the lead author of the study. But they “offer very modest protection against long Covid,” he said.

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