The next public health crisis is going to be long Covid. The numbers are very large. According to the Office for National Statistics, there are 1.5 million people in the UK who have long Covid, and 281,000 of them are so ill that their ability to undertake day-to-day activities has been limited. That is roughly the population of the city.
I know how long Covid can be. I'm only 23. I was halfway through my master's degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing when Covid struck. I have been seriously ill for a full year. My main symptom has been an intense fatigue that has forced me to spend up to 16 hours a day in bed and, when I do get up, I can't do any strenuous activity without my symptoms worsening. My life is almost completely on hold because of Long Covid.
I haven't received any effective medical treatment. I have been given advice on how to manage my symptoms at the Covid clinic at the University College hospital. Neither measure has made a difference in my fatigue.
My experience is not unique. There are no specialist long Covid clinics that can offer effective treatments. The primary issue is not the clinics. We don't have treatments because research isn't progressing fast enough.
Long Covid is no longer a mystery. There is a growing body of research looking at the underlying pathophysiology. There are a number of theories as to what causes it. Even if we know more about the illness than we did two years ago, it's not likely that we'll find a cure. Hundreds of thousands of longhaulers, such as myself, are desperate to get their lives back and the research is moving too slowly.
Our political leaders are to blame for this. 50 million dollars was put into long Covid research by the government. This is not close to what is required. The all-party parliamentary group on coronaviruses released a report last week that criticized the government for not adequately funding and long Covid research.
The research is moving far too slowly for the hundreds of thousands of longhaulers desperate to get their lives back
The research into post-viral illnesses has been underfunded for decades. There are 250,000 people in the UK who suffer from myalgic encephalomyelitis. It has the same symptoms as long Covid, including brain fog and fatigue. A study found that almost half of long Covid patients meet the criteria for ME. If we had found effective treatments for ME, we would also have treatments for Covid. ME has also been deprived of research funding. In the UK, most of the funding has gone towards studies that understand post-viral illnesses as primarily psychological, rather than physical.
The conclusion of this deeply misguided approach was the 2011 Pace trial, which claimed that cognitive behavioural therapy, a form of psychological rehabilitation often used for depression, and graded exercise therapy were effective treatments for ME. After an extended campaign by ME patients, researchers realized that the trial data did not support their conclusions. In November 2020, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published an analysis that found the quality of science to be very low and advised doctors not to offer ME.
We seem to be past the dark days of psychologising post-viral illnesses after this debacle and the growing research into long Covid. Research is decades behind where it should be because of the damage done. Long Covid has an opportunity to find treatments for post-viral illnesses. This will require investment on a grander scale than 50m. The economic impacts of long Covid, particularly on employment, pale in comparison to the 50m. The risk profile for long Covid is different to that of Covid. The elderly are at greatest risk of dying because of Covid, but younger people are more likely to develop long Covid. Studies show that long Covid cuts down people in their economic prime, with nearly half of longhaulers requiring reduced working hours and one in four unable to work at all. The current labour shortage is probably caused by Long Covid. Companies are feeling the pinch. A quarter of UK employers say long Covid is one of the main causes of long-term, sickness-related absence.
Long Covid will be a strain on the already overburdened health service. It will be very expensive to provide care for hundreds of longhaulers. More than 3% of healthcare workers have long Covid, which is above the national average of 2%. The National Health Service lost more than 2m days due to long-covid-related absences before Omicron. Teachers and social workers are disproportionately affected by Covid.
It threatens to affect almost all sectors of society and the economy, making that figure seem more irrational and miserly. It is important to think of all the talent that is being wasted while longhaulers wait for treatments.
Over the past two years, we have seen how quickly things can move when governments, scientists and the pharmaceutical industry apply themselves to a problem. The development of an array of effective vaccines was a triumph of human effort. The battle against long Covid needs to be intensified. Hundreds of thousands of people will lose their lives if we dally.
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