Half a million patients have ‘long Covid’
UP TO half a million coronavirus sufferers are feeling the effects of “long Covid”, MPS have been told, with doctors dismissing many of the symptoms as signs of other illnesses.
Psychosis, fatigue, loss of sight and mobility issues are among the wideranging conditions identified in those that have previously had the virus.
Claire Hastie, the founder of the Long Covid Support Group, warned that GPS were regularly misdiagnosing ongoing problems as anxiety or ME. “Many people in our group are being told by their GPS that it’s caused by anxiety, and it’s all in their heads,” she said. “It can cause anxiety, but it is not caused by anxiety. The science needs to catch up with us.”
Ms Hastie said that data from the King’s College London symptom tracker app showed that between 200,000 and 500,000 people were currently living with the long-term effects of Covid-19 in the UK. She told yesterday’s live evidence session of the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus that the virus had left her largely confined to a wheelchair and unable to walk 13 yards after previously cycling 13 miles every day.
Dr Jake Suett, an anaesthetics and intensive care doctor, and a fellow member of the Facebook support group which has more than 15,000 members, said: “I was doing 12-hour shifts in ICU. It’s a high-pressure situation, you have to be able to be active. I was going to the gym three times a week regularly. Now, a flight of stairs is about what I can manage before I have to stop. If I’m on my feet, shortness of breath and chest pain comes back.”
An online survey of 1,800 people experiencing long-term symptoms found that many employees felt “pressured” to return to work despite feeling unable to do so. Ms Hastie, who contracted the virus in March, said: “We’ve got people who’ve been told or think they’ll never work again. People are being pressured back by employers who don’t understand this.” She added that it was “not uncommon” for children to have long Covid, noting that scientific research was considering whether genetics were a “potential factor”.
Robin Gorna, an activist, said her three children, aged between 11 and 16, had experienced long-term symptoms of the virus. “One of them has yet to recover, one of them took four months to recover,” she said.
Andrew Gwynne, the Labour MP, said he had been unable to shake his own Covid-19 symptoms for 18 weeks. “I feel
‘Many people are being told by their GPS that it’s caused by anxiety. The science needs to catch up with us’
like it’s the London Marathon whenever I’ve done just a basic task around the house,” he said “I sometimes struggle just to ask a single parliamentary question by Zoom, and then I’ll spend the rest of the day in bed.”
The Royal College of General Practitioners said it expects GPS to see an influx of patients with “lingering” long-covid illnesses.
Researchers from Italy reported that nearly nine in 10 patients discharged from a Rome hospital after recovering from Covid-19 still experience at least one symptom 60 days after onset. Doctors in Lombardy, Italy’s worst-affected region, warned that some victims may never recover.
The inquiry also heard from people who have lost family members to Covid-19, who said that they felt as if their experiences had been “swept under the carpet” by the Government.
Jo Goodman, who represents a group of 1,450 grieving family members, said she had written to Boris
Johnson three times to request a meeting. Ms Goodman, whose father Stuart died after being diagnosed with the virus, said: “At first, we only received a two-line acknowledgement and eventually a letter saying they are unable to meet with us due to the current pandemic. The fact that they’re able to meet with cycling groups and other groups, it feels as though we are being swept under the carpet.”
She urged the Government to consider a Hillsborough-style inquiry into its handling of its coronavirus response akin to the Taylor report, which examined the 1989 football stadium disaster.
She said: “The full understanding of what went wrong at Hillsborough took a long time, but within a matter of months the Taylor review looked at very urgent critical issues around safety in football stadiums and made changes in advance of the next season.
“So that’s the kind of approach we’re looking at and we want that to be judge-led and have all of the access to all of the evidence and the witnesses.”