"Insufficient evidence" to link Covid-19 vaccine with Long Covid; More research needed

Lareb could not find sufficient evidence to link the COVID-19 vaccines to cases of Long Covid, the side effects center said on Wednesday. The center stressed that more research is needed.

The center received over 2,200 reports from people with symptoms that started within 28 days after getting vaccinated and lasted for more than six months. Lareb did further investigation into 78 of the 2,282 reports, which involved “a combination of typical complaints” that resemble Long Covid.

“The combinations of complaints are very diverse,” just like with Long Covid, Lareb said. They include shortness of breath, fatigue, malaise, chest pain, palpitations, dizziness, headaches, muscle pains, and joint complaints. “Also mentioned are brain fog, difficulty thinking, reduced ability to concentrate, difficulty finding words, inability to cope with stimuli and memory loss.”

Just over half of the 78 investigated cases were medically examined. Sixteen got a medical diagnosis, eleven of which were Long Covid. “In about half of these reports, no medical research has been done into the possible causes of the complaints, or this is unknown,” Lareb said. “It is not clear whether there are possible other causes, such as a coronavirus infection.” Not everyone was even tested for the coronavirus.

Lareb, therefore, concluded that it had “insufficient evidence” to say there is a link between these symptoms and the Covid-19 vaccines. The Medicines Evaluation Board came to the same conclusion.

But Lareb director Agnes Kant stressed to NRC that more research is needed. The timing of the symptoms, among other things, is striking, she said. “We see a pattern in which a large proportion of the complaints arose in the first three days after vaccination.”

GP Eline Hofman pointed out to the Volkskrant that Lareb looked at just over 3 percent of the over 2,200 reports it received up to 16 August 2023. “That raises the question: what does the other 97 percent have?” She, too, thinks more research is needed, calling the Lareb report “one piece of the puzzle.”