Long Covid Variant specific symptoms

Fatigue may be more of an issue with Omicron

There seems to be a clear difference between the general symptoms from the different viral variants.

My observation previously indicated that the entry mechanism for Omicron seems to preferentially target the sinuses and may be more difficult for the immune system to clear.

If this is the case, upper airway persistent infection will possibly have a greater impact on fatigue type symptoms in long Covid patients.

ORs are derived from logistic regression models with swab positive (1/0) as the outcome variable, adjusted for age, sex and vaccination status. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals. ORs are higher for BA.2 than BA.1 for all symptoms. Fever and cough have the highest ORs for BA.2 and BA.1, while loss or change of smell or taste have the highest ORs in all previous variants.

Strong association with Omicron and upper airway symptoms demonstrated here.

Variant-specific symptoms of COVID-19 in a study of 1,542,510 adults in England
Whitaker, Matthew, et al. "Variant-specific symptoms of COVID-19 in a study of 1,542,510 adults in England." Nature Communications 13.1 (2022): 1-10.

Age, sex and, where appropriate, vaccination status are forced into the models as unpenalised variables; regression coefficients for the symptoms are constrained to be positive. The selection proportion indicates the proportion of LASSO models, trained on subsamples of the data, in which each symptom was selected as a predictor.

This analysis some months ago seems to fit with the current pattern for long Covid patients. Recurrent Omicron infection will be more common with exacerbation of long Covid symptoms.

Could the rise in Omicron represent persistent sinus infection?