Half a million patients have 'long Covid', with after-effects lingering for months

Up to half a million Britons are suffering the effects of "long Covid", MPs have been told, with some doctors dismissing many of the long-term symptoms suffered in the wake of coronavirus as ME.

Psychosis, fatigue, loss of eyesight and mobility issues are among the wide-ranging conditions that have been identified in those who 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, saying: "Many people in our group to this day are being told by their GPs that it's caused by anxiety and it's all in their heads.

"It can cause anxiety, but it is not caused by anxiety. The science needs to catch up with us."

Ms Hastie said data from the King's College London symptom tracker app showed that between 200,000 and 500,000 people in the UK are currently living with the long-term effects of Covid-19.

She told Wednesday's live evidence session of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on coronavirus that the virus had left her largely confined to a wheelchair and unable to walk 13 metres after previously having cycled 13 miles every day.

A fellow member of the Facebook support group, which now has more than 15,000 members, said his experience had left him unable to walk up a flight of stairs without feeling chest pain and shortness of breath.

Dr Jake Suett, an anaesthetist and intensive care doctor, 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.

"And now a flight of stairs or the food shop is about what I can manage before I have to stop. If I'm on my feet then shortness of breath comes back, chest pain comes back."

The APPG, which now has more than 60 MPs and peers as members, was told that eight in 10 people living with "long Covid" feel unable to return to work in a normal capacity.

An online survey of 1,800 people experiencing long-term symptoms found many employees felt "pressured" to return to work despite feeling unable to do so.

Ms Hastie, who contracted coronavirus in March, said: "We've got people in our group who've been told or think they'll never work again. If they've got a physical job, someone's a Pilates instructor for example, she doesn't know if and when she'll ever be able to work again in her chosen field of work.

“People are being pressured back by employers who, understandably, don't understand this."

She added that it was "not uncommon" for children to have "long Covid", noting that scientific research is considering whether genetics is a "potential factor".

Activist Robin Gorna noted that her three children, aged between 11 and 16, had experienced long-term symptoms. "One of them has yet to recover, one of them took four months to recover," she said.

Labour MP Andrew Gwynne, a member of the APPG, revealed that he had been unable to shake his own coronavirus symptoms for 18 weeks.

"I feel like [I'm running] 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" illnesses.

Researchers from Italy have reported that nearly nine in 10 patients discharged from a Rome hospital after recovering from Covid-19 were still experiencing at least one symptom 60 days after onset. This week, doctors in Lombardy, the worst-affected region in Italy, warned that some victims may never recover from the illness.

The Parliamentary group also heard from bereaved relatives who have lost family members to coronavirus and said they felt 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, the Prime Minister, three times to request a meeting.

Ms Goodman, whose father Stuart passed away after being diagnosed with coronavirus, 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."

Ms Goodman urged the Government to consider a Hillsborough disaster-style inquiry into its handling of the coronavirus response akin to the Taylor Report, which examined the 1989 football stadium tragedy.

She said: "Obviously 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."