Wang, Yalan, Liu, Maoshun, Guo, Yuanyuan et al. · Biosafety and health · 2024 · DOI
This study surveyed over 5,500 people in China about five months after they had COVID-19 to see what long-term health problems they experienced. The most common complaints were fatigue (tiredness), memory problems, post-exertional malaise (feeling much worse after physical activity), and brain fog. People with certain pre-existing conditions like heart disease, autoimmune diseases, or asthma were more likely to have moderate to severe symptoms.
This study is relevant to ME/CFS research because it characterizes the prevalence and risk factors for post-viral symptoms, including post-exertional malaise—a cardinal feature of ME/CFS—in a large COVID-19 cohort. Understanding which pre-existing conditions and demographic factors predispose individuals to prolonged post-viral fatigue and dysfunction informs both rehabilitation strategies and identification of at-risk populations across post-viral illnesses.
This study does not establish causation between SARS-CoV-2 infection and reported symptoms; it only documents associations. The cross-sectional design cannot determine whether pre-existing conditions caused worse outcomes or whether infection exacerbated pre-existing conditions. Self-reported data without clinical confirmation may include recall bias and symptom misclassification, and the findings may not generalize beyond the Chinese population surveyed.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Wang, Yalan, Liu, Maoshun, Guo, Yuanyuan, Li, Min, Guo, Peipei, He, Wenjun, et al. (2024). An online survey among convalescents 5 months post SARS-CoV-2 infection in China.. Biosafety and health. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bsheal.2024.06.001
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-wang-2024-online-survey,
author = {Wang, Yalan and Liu, Maoshun and Guo, Yuanyuan and Li, Min and Guo, Peipei and He, Wenjun and Ma, Tian and Liu, Peipei and Guo, Yaxin and Ye, Beiwei and Liu, Jun and Wu, Guizhen},
title = {An online survey among convalescents 5 months post SARS-CoV-2 infection in China.},
journal = {Biosafety and health},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.1016/j.bsheal.2024.06.001},
note = {PubMed: 40078662},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/wang-2024-online-survey},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/wang-2024-online-survey
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