Do Vaccines Stop Long Covid?

Long Covid by Profession

Does vaccination prevent or reduce the severity of Long Covid? I was looking at the latest stats from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) today and thought of a way to check.

In 2021, in the UK, care home workers (unless exempt) were required to have two doses of an approved Covid vaccine. As a result, up to 60,000 care home workers (10% of the total workforce) lost their jobs. The mandate was meant to be extended to healthcare workers in 2022 but this was scrapped due to a last minute government U-turn and the latest narrative changing from Covid to Ukraine. However, many workers, fearing for their jobs, were vaccinated before the U-turn. The care home worker mandate was also revoked at the same time, in March 2022.

As a result, care home and healthcare workers have the highest rates of vaccination in the UK. Yes there are many confounders but to me this provides a great control group. If vaccines prevent Long Covid, surely you would see this benefit showing up in the vaccinated care home and healthcare workers.

Well it’s certainly not showing up in these data. This looks at the percentage of people with Long Covid by profession and the professions with the highest rates are healthcare and social care workers (on the right of the bar chart).

How about comparing with a year ago? No, high vaccination rates don’t seem to have helped here either. Other than the arts sector, health and social care workers have the worst increase in self-reported Long Covid from a year ago (again, on the right of the bar chart).

We can even see which Long Covid symptoms are worse or better in health and social care workers compared with all people.

In fact, the only symptoms that are better for health and social care workers are coughs, loss of appetite and runny noses.

So do vaccines stop Long Covid? It would seem not. Moreover, the highly vaccinated health and social care workers seem to suffer more from the majority of Long Covid symptoms.