About 10% of people infected with Omicron reported having long COVID, a lower percentage than estimated for people infected with earlier strains of the coronavirus, says a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. [Medscape]

The research team looked at data from 8,646 adults infected with COVID-19 at different times of the pandemic and 1,118 who did not have COVID. 

"Based on a subset of 2,231 patients in this analysis who had a first COVID-19 infection on or after Dec. 1, 2021, when the Omicron variant was circulating, about 10% experienced long-term symptoms or long COVID after six months," the National Institutes of Health said in a news release. 

People who were unvaccinated or got COVID before Omicron were more likely to have long COVID and had more severe cases, the NIH said.

Previous studies have come up with higher figures than 10% for people who have long COVID. 

For instance, in June 2022 the CDC said 1 in 5 Americans who had COVID reported having long COVID. And a University of Oxford study published in September 2021 found more than a third of patients had long COVID symptoms.

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