Most of us have had at least one COVID infection, with many having had the virus several times. Some recover quickly, but for others recovery is slow. But how long does it usually take to fully recover from symptoms?
A new study reported that it takes about 3 months to recover from COVID-19 physical symptoms, but 9 months for many to return to how they felt mentally before they became ill with the virus.
To repeat, in this study of 1096 persons who had COVID and 371 persons who did not become infected with COVID (as measured by a FDA approved SARS-CoV-2 test) − it took about 3 months to fully recover physically from COVID, but 9 months mentally. The mental symptom recovery showed gradual improvement over time. But even at a year about 1 in 5 had not fully recovered from the mental symptoms, which may be indicative of long COVID.
People participating in the study were surveyed about physical functioning, fatigue, pain, anxiety, depression, cognitive function, and sleep. This was not a long COVID study. It was a look at how persons who had a COVID infection recover from COVID symptoms over time (they were followed for 1 year).
From Discover: Mental Recovery From COVID-19 Symptoms Can Take Up to 9 Months
Some infections are tougher to recover from than others. Take COVID-19 infections, for instance. According to a new study in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, people with COVID and COVID-like symptoms typically take around nine months to recover from their infections mentally, and around three months to recover from their infections physically, suggesting that mental recovery is a particularly lengthy process that requires more study and more medical attention.
COVID-19 infections are associated with a wide range of symptoms, from fever and fatigue to coughing and congestion. But in the months after a COVID-19 infection, many patients still aren’t at their best, at least in terms of their mental and physical health. Indeed, all sorts of studies have shown that patients can continue to report reduced well-being for months after COVID — sometimes as a result of a chronic, post-COVID condition called long COVID — with harmful results for their health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL).
Hoping to find out how long it takes to truly recover, both mentally and physically, from COVID-19 symptoms, the study authors analyzed the recovery times of people with COVID and COVID-like infections. Studying around 1,100 COVID-positive and around 300 COVID-negative patients, the team surveyed participants about their physical function, pain, fatigue, anxiety, depression, social participation, sleep disturbance, and cognitive function for a total of 12 months following their illness.
After a year of surveys, the study authors found that participants fell into one of four health categories: optimal overall HRQoL, poor mental HRQoL, poor physical HRQoL, or poor overall HRQoL. Though most of the participants regained their optimal physical health faster than they regained their optimal mental health, around 20 percent of the patients continued to report poor overall HRQoL around 12 months after their infection.