For many, the COVID-19 pandemic is in the past. Immunity has been strengthened through infections, vaccinations, or both, and illness no longer causes the same level of alarm.
However, a recent study indicates that recovering from COVID-19 might take longer and be more complex than we currently assume. The study, published in , revealed that, on average, many individuals require up to three months to regain their physical health after a COVID-19 infection and nine months to restore their mental well-being. In up to 20% of the infected individuals analyzed, mental health recovery took even longer, extending to a year or more.
Lauren Wisk, an assistant professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles, and her team analyzed data from people who contracted COVID-19 at eight U.S. health facilities between December 2020 and August 2022. Participants completed surveys every three months for a year, detailing their recovery and recording physical and mental symptoms such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, social participation, sleep disturbances, and pain.
Mental well-being took considerably longer to recover than physical health. “Frankly, we weren’t necessarily expecting to see recovery patterns that differed as significantly as the ones we are seeing,” Wisk stated. “While it makes sense that some people recover physically faster, and others recover mentally faster, the average difference we observed was surprising.”
Wisk and her team also asked participants to self-report if they had Long COVID, defined as symptoms persisting for at least three months after the initial infection. Almost half of those reporting poor physical and mental quality of life following infection also believed they had Long COVID. While this assessment was subjective, it aligned with the data Wisk’s team collected; Long COVID was reported less frequently among those who reported only poor physical health, only poor mental health, or neither.
The findings highlight the necessity for a more in-depth understanding of the short-term and long-term physical and mental impacts of COVID-19 infections, according to Wisk. “We need to consider a potentially extended recovery period for people, because even if someone recovers physically from their symptoms, their recovery might not end there.”
Recognizing these longer-lasting effects could encourage individuals to seek treatment for their symptoms, potentially shortening their recovery time. Wisk suggests that short courses of anxiety medication and sleep therapies, for example, could alleviate some of the lingering effects of COVID-19.
“We know how to treat the initial infection and keep people alive, but we lack a comprehensive treatment protocol for the after-effects and persistent symptoms,” Wisk said. “These data should help guide the development of protocols that consider recovery over a potentially extended period before people return to normal.”
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