COVID-19: HOW MUCH IS 'LONG COVID' BEING CONSIDERED?

At a Long Covid clinic

Today it was good to hear mention of Long Covid today, both during PM Johnson’s presentation and by the Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, in the Commons.  That has been rare.  Yet Long Covid, as a collection of ongoing symptoms, is a major problem.  How much is the Government taking it into account?

As we saw in an earlier post, the ONS (Office of National Statistics) recently estimates hundreds of thousands of people experience long-term symptoms.  For example, some 178,000 people have had their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities "limited a lot", and 634,000 have their day-to-day activities adversely affected by symptoms.  A major problem.

The last SAGE meeting on 9 June considered three reports from modelling groups:

• Warwick University
• LSHTM (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
• Imperial College London

The combined picture was behind the delay in removing restrictions from 21 June to 19 July.  To allow more adults to be vaccinated, and to collect more data on the newer, dominant Delta variant.

The models primarily address case rates, hospitalisations and deaths.  But not a single mention of Long Covid.  Whilst that would have been understandable early in the pandemic, it is a glaring omission now.

Case rates are rising rapidly, amongst three groups:

• Vaccinated adults, given that the vaccine is not totally effective, especially for those who have not yet had two jabs.  As vaccines take around 2 weeks to be effective, they would have had to be done by now to be ready for 19 July
• Unvaccinated adults
• Unvaccinated children

In total there are still millions of people who will catch the virus.  The ZOE symptoms study last year for King’s College London estimated for those who had had Covid-19 "around one in seven had symptoms lasting for at least 4 weeks, with around one in 20 staying ill for 8 weeks and one in fifty suffering for longer than 12 weeks".  It is as yet unclear how the Delta variant will act in causing Long Covid, and the extent vaccination will reduce the severity of symptoms.  Maybe lower proportions.  Could be higher, or similar.  We don’t yet know.

With rising case rates, potentially many more thousands of people of all ages will suffer, including children. Many seriously as the ONS has discovered. The sheer numbers potentially becoming a bigger problem for society than hospitalisation and deaths.  Not only for the individuals, but also their livelihoods and employers.  Plus extra strain on GPs and specialist NHS services.  That has a knock-on impact on ability of the NHS to provide a service for other health conditions.

So is the Government taking the risk of Long Covid into account?  Informally if not formally in the modelling?  Surely Long Covid can’t be ignored?