About 1.4 million Canadian adults who know or suspect they have had COVID-19 say they experienced symptoms months after becoming ill, according to new data released Monday by Statistics Canada.
The data, released in collaboration with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), is the first national look at Canadians who experienced long-term symptoms after a positive or suspected COVID-19 test . It was gathered through the second cycle of StatCan’s Canadian Antibody and COVID-19 Health Survey.
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As of the end of May 2022, almost a third of Canadians aged 18 and over tested positive for COVID-19 and another 8.3% suspected they had the virus, according to survey results.
Of those who know or believe they were infected, 14.8% (or 1.4 million Canadians) say they had symptoms at least three months after their initial infection.
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Fatigue was the most common symptom, experienced by nearly three-quarters of patients with long-term symptoms, followed by cough and shortness of breath in 39 percent and brain fog in 33 percent.
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More women reported prolonged symptoms of COVID-19 than men, but there were no significant differences between different age groups.
The data also show that people who experienced more severe symptoms from their initial COVID-19 illness were more likely to experience long-term symptoms. For example, among those who rated their initial illness as moderate, 15 percent say they had long-term symptoms, while 6.3 percent who reported a mild case of COVID-19 reported of long-term symptoms.
In addition, almost one in three Canadians who experienced symptoms for at least three months after having COVID-19 say they had recovered from their initial illness before symptoms returned.
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More men than women, 37 percent compared to 29 percent, said their COVID-19 symptoms resolved and then returned, but this phenomenon also varied by age group and be lower among those aged 65 and over.
Meanwhile, after December 2021, when Omicron became the dominant strain of the virus infecting Canadians, the number of people experiencing prolonged symptoms dropped by more than half.
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Statistics Canada does not refer to these cases as “long covid”. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines the post-COVID-19 condition as any illness that occurs three months after the onset of symptoms that lasts at least two months or more and that cannot be explained with any other diagnosis, including “fatigue, shortness of breath, cognitive dysfunction, but also others and generally have an impact on daily functioning.”
Overall, most Canadians rated their symptoms as mild to moderate. This was the case for almost four out of five Canadians, while 16.7 per cent rated their symptoms as severe, defined as having a significant impact on their daily life.
Statistics Canada cautions that some of these results, collected between January 2020 and May 2022, may be underestimates, as some people infected with COVID-19 may not have known they had contracted the virus or received a test result false negative
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