‘Long Covid’and Associations With Physical Activity And Vaccination Status Among Us Adults

PURPOSE: During the COVID-19 pandemic physical activity and being vaccinated were shown to provide protection from serious/critical cases of COVID-19. In the wake of the pandemic, there emerged between 12%-20% of US adults who had COVID-19 and manifested symptoms for COVID-19 three months following their illness but lacked an active infection. Hence these adults have been diagnosed with Long COVID’(LC). The purpose of this study was to examine the associations of physical activity, vaccination status, and selected chronic conditions among US adults identified as having LC using CDC’s 2023 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) with the hypotheses that those adults meeting the aerobic physical activity guidelines (PAG) and those having at least one COVID-19 vaccination (VAX) would have lesser odds of reporting LC. METHODS: We examined the association of LC among the 46.4% of adults 18 years and older who had tested positive for COVID-19 (n = 201,248) and a subset these adults who reported having LC (n = 27,074, 13.6%). Both univariate and logistic regression analyses were conducted using SPSS (v29) for complex samples. A series of logistic regression analyses controlling for age, sex, overweight/obesity, type 2 diabetes, race/ethnicity, and educational attainment comparing the outcome variable of LC with the exposure variables of 1) meeting the PAG and 2) having at least 1 VAX were conducted. RESULTS: Adults (n = 13,449; 12.2%) who achieved the PAG were at lower odds of reporting LC (OR = 0.852 95% CI = 0.771, 0.942) compared with those not meeting the PAG (n = 9,809; 15.9%). Respondents reporting at least one VAX (n = 7,052; 12.7%) compared with those reporting no VAX (n = 1500; 15.8%) for LC were found to be equivocal (OR = 0.947 95% CI = 0.80, 1.08). CONCLUSIONS: The present findings support the hypothesis that adults achieving the PAG recommendations appear to manifest protection against LC following a case of COVID-19, while adults having at least 1 VAX may not be sufficiently protected from LC. However, this latter finding may be affected by the proportion of those adults being ‘fully’ vaccinated as incomplete since the primary BRFSS question about VAX appears limited to just one question, with a follow-up question about subsequent vaccinations having a significantly smaller response rate. Supported by: NIH 1R15GM152943