Prevalence of “Long COVID” in the United States

With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent approval of updated COVID-19 vaccines (2023), it seems timely for an updated news item on what is colloquially referred to as “Long COVID.”  

Using data from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey, two data briefs regarding Long COVID were published last month by the National Center for Health Statistics. One of these briefs was focused on adults (Adjaye-Gbewonyo et al, 2023), while the other was on children (Vahratian et al, 2023).  

In both reports, Long COVID was defined as having “symptoms lasting three months or longer that you did not have prior to having COVID-19.” This information was collected from those that had either a positive COVID-19 test or who were symptomatic and had a doctor’s diagnosis of COVID-19. Adjaye-Gbewonyo and colleagues (2023) reported that 6.9 percent of the adults have had Long COVID and 3.4 percent currently had it when they were interviewed. For children, the numbers were 1.3 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.  

Both data briefs explored relationships between ever having had or currently having Long COVID and sex, age, and race and Hispanic origin. Adjaye-Gbewonyo and colleagues (2023) also examined family income and level of urbanization of county residence (i.e, large central metropolitan area, large fringe metropolitan area, medium and small metropolitan areas, and nonmetropolitan areas). 

Interestingly, for both adults and children, a significantly greater percentage of females than males reported ever having had Long COVID. Readers are referred to the full text of these data briefs for summaries of their other analyses.  

References 

Adjaye-Gbewonyo D, Vahratian A, Perrine CG, Bertolli J. (2023) Long COVID in adults: United States, 2022. NCHS Data Brief, no 480. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc:132417. 

U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2023) FDA takes action on updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to better protect against currently circulating variants. (accessed October 3, 2023). 

Vahratian A, Adjaye-Gbewonyo D, Lin JS, Saydah S. (2023) Long COVID in children: United States, 2022. NCHS Data Brief, no 479. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.  DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc:132416.