**3. Results**

There were 766 persons who completed the survey, but as the participants could choose not to answer a question/questionnaire, the number of answers varies (see detailed information for each variable in the tables).

#### *3.1. Characteristics of the Participants*

Most participants were middle-aged (mean 48 years, SD 10), women (89%), highly educated (72%), working (69%) and approximately equally distributed in terms of their residential community (living in a city, town or village), see Table 1.


**Table 1.** Characteristics of the study sample (*n* = 766).

Thirty-nine percent reported comorbidities such as asthma (27%), thyroid dysfunction (19%), allergies (12%) and hypertension (11%). A majority developed their acute COVID-19 infection during the second wave (autumn and winter of 2020–2021), and most persons were not in need of hospital care (89%). The most commonly reported acute COVID-19 symptoms were fatigue (88%), fever (74%), headache (73%) and anosmia/ageusia (67%). The remaining COVID-19 symptoms (for at least two months) were fatigue (79%), joint and muscle pain (45%), anosmia/ageusia (42%), dyspnea (39%), chest pain (35%) and cough (18%). The mean duration of post-COVID-19 was 13 months (SD 5), Table 1.

#### *3.2. Perceived Consequences of COVID-19*

According to the questionnaires on perceived consequences of COVID-19, a majority of the participants experienced physical fatigue (85%), mental fatigue (84%), dizziness (84%) and balance impairments (56%); see Table 2. The median perceived aerobic capacity measured by the RPC was 5 (IQR 3–7), i.e., walking or cycling slowly was the most strenuous activity that could be sustained for at least 30 min. Most persons perceived no difficulties in ADL, but 78% perceived reduced work ability (WAS) (poor or moderate) compared to their lifetime best.

**Table 2.** Perceived consequences of post-COVID-19.


Overall life satisfaction (i.e., Life as a whole) showed a median of 4 (IQR 3–4), whereof 77% of the participants perceived low satisfaction with Life as a whole (Table 3). For 87%, Life as a whole was experienced as deteriorated compared to before COVID-19, and almost all persons (98%) answered that the deterioration was due to or partly due to COVID-19.

**Table 3.** Life satisfaction and LiSat-11 scores in persons with post-COVID-19.



**Table 3.** *Cont.*

IQR: Inter Quartile Range. Reference value: proportion of persons with low satisfaction with Life as a whole in the Swedish reference sample (based on ratings of 2533 individuals aged 18 to 65 years) according to Fugl-Meyer et al. [22]. \* Comparison to reference sample by One Sample Proportion Test.

For the domain-specific items (2–11), a large proportion of the participants perceived low satisfaction with Physical health (91%) and Leisure (89%), and a majority experienced low satisfaction with the other items (51–79%) except for ADL (33%) and Partner relationship (48%). Compared to the Swedish reference values [22], a significantly higher proportion of persons in our sample perceived low satisfaction with Life as a whole and all domain-specific items (*p* < 0.001) except for Economy (*p* = 0.096); see Table 3.

#### *3.3. Factors Associated with Life as a Whole*

Work ability had the strongest univariate association with low satisfaction of Life as a whole (Odds ratio 6.255, 95% CI 3.978–9.837, *p* < 0.001) (see Table 4), and the factors of aerobic capacity, physical fatigue, mental fatigue, balance impairment, dizziness, ADL, provision, residential community and family situation also fulfilled the criteria (*p* ≤ 0.20) for being included in the multivariate model building.

**Table 4.** Univariate logistic regression analyses of factors associated with low satisfaction with Life as a whole in persons with post-COVID-19.


Life as a whole obtained by item 1 in LiSat-11. CI: confidence interval. Nagelkerke R Square: pseudo R-square value that demonstrates how well the model explains the dependent variable (from 0 to 1). Ref: reference in the logistic regression analysis for nominal variables.

In the final multivariate regression model (Table 5), work ability showed the highest odds ratio (3.369, 95% CI 2.040–5.565, *p* < 0.001) and had an explanatory value, Nagelkerke R Square, of 0.177. The Nagelkerke R Square value is a pseudo R-square value that demonstrates how well the model explains the dependent variable from 0 to 1. Aerobic capacity added 0.063 to the Nagelkerke R Square value of the total model, mental fatigue added another 0.028, residential community added 0.021 and physical fatigue added 0.007. The final model had a total Nagelkerke R Square value of 0.296 (*p* < 0.001) (*n* = 619).

**Table 5.** Multivariate logistic regression analyses of factors associated with low satisfaction with Life as a whole in persons with post-COVID-19 (*n* = 619).

