India on Friday reported 2,841 Covid cases and 9 fatalities. The cumulative caseload is 4,31,16,254 (18,604 active cases) and 5,24,190 fatalitiesWorldwide: Over 520 million cases and over 6.26 million fatalities.Vaccination in India: Over 1.9 billion doses. Worldwide: Over 11.39 billion doses.TODAY’S TAKEHow long can Covid symptoms linger?More than half of people hospitalised with Covid-19 still have at least one symptom two years after they first tested positive, finds a new Chinese study.Published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal, this is the longest longitudinal cohort study of Covid survivors, and an age-matched, sex-matched and comorbidity-matched control group of individuals who never caught the infection, to describe the dynamic recovery of health.The research followed 1,192 participants in China infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the first phase of the pandemic in 2020.While physical and mental health generally improved over time, the study suggests that Covid-19 patients tend to have poorer health and quality of life than the general population.”Our findings indicate that for a certain proportion of hospitalised Covid-19 survivors, while they may have cleared the initial infection, more than two years is needed to recover fully,” study lead author Professor Bin Cao said in a statement.Six months after initially falling ill, 68% of participants reported at least one long Covid symptom, claims the study. By two years after infection, reports of symptoms drop to 55% but these patients reported lower quality of life than those who escaped this condition.At the two-year-mark, 31% reported fatigue or muscle weakness, 35% reported pain or discomfort, 19% reported anxiety or depression and 31% reported sleep difficulties.TELL ME ONE THING‘Narcissism determines compliance with Covid protocols’An individual’s decision to mask up and follow other Covid-safety measures diligently depends on his or her level of narcissism, claim researchers at the Pennsylvania State University in the US.The researchers, including Peter Hatemi, distinguished professor of political science at the university, looked at the effects of two types of narcissism – “grandiose” and “vulnerable” – on whether people were more or less likely to wear a mask in public or get vaccinated.Grandiose narcissism is characterised by the pursuit of social status and a desire for others to see them as important and worthy of admiration. And vulnerable narcissism is associated with selfishness and ego-centrism or being especially sensitive to judgement from others.For the study, the researchers collected information from a nationally representative sample of 1,100 US adults in March 2021They found that participants higher in grandiose narcissism were less likely to wear a mask or get vaccinated. However, individuals who choose to wear a mask were also more likely to tell others to wear one, as well. Participants higher in vulnerable narcissism were also less likely to follow Covid protocols. “If you want to convince someone high in grandiose narcissism to wear a mask or participate in other mitigations, make that mitigation cool and unique to fulfil their need to stand out,” says Hatemi. “For those over sensitive to judgement, you could tell them the mitigation is socially sanctioned. Both of these strategies seem to tap into these personalities more than emphasising the greater good, for example.”The researchers said the findings — recently published in the journal Current Psychology — could be used to help shape messaging in the future.Follow news that matters to you in real-time.
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