Long Covid sufferers on the struggle of coping with 'invisible' illness that affects 1 in 100; Long Covid affects more than a million people in the UK according to official figures. We spoke to some of those affected.
Byline: By, Sam Volpe
After falling ill with COVID-19 in March 2020, Claire Hastie has never fully recovered.
She has, like thousands of others, Long COVID -and last year she started the Long COVID Support group, which now has more than 45,000 members.
Brought up in Brancepeth in County Durham, Claire is part of NHS England's Long COVID taskforce, and she has worked with organisations like the World Health Organisation to advocate for others like her who continue to suffer debilitating COVID symptoms months after initially being infected with COVID-19.
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Clare, 49, works in communications and has been living in the Birmingham area in recent years -she told ChronicleLive how all three of her teenage sons had been suffering from Long COVID too -and that the number of people affected would "definitely run into the millions".
"I fell ill in March 2020 -I used to walk miles each day, now I'm a wheelchair user and all three of my boys have it too. Thankfully the eldest felt well enough in himself that he could step up to keep the family going.
"I don't have the ability to deal with information. My kids miss more school than they attend."
The Office of National Statistics reports that "an estimated 1.2 million people living in private households in the UK" were experiencing Long COVID as of December 2021. That's 1.9% of the population. The figure is based on self-reporting.
Clare said: "We think that's probably an underestimate. Whatever the number is, it's in the millions. Some people think it's just being out of breath, it's not. It's chronic pain, it can be so many things, people are being driven to suicide, even.
"It's simply the biggest mass disabling event in history. And more and more people are getting it. The only way to prevent Long COVID is to stop people getting COVID."
The ONS survey reported that 439,000 people claimed to have Long COVID symptoms more than a year after getting the virus -and 232,000 said their ability to undertake "day-to-day" activities was "limited a lot".
She said with other campaigners she had pushed for their to be specialist NHS clinics set up and she said she was grateful, but said she wanted, going forward, to see "a change of emphasis". She said: "Patients should lead this, as opposed to just being consulted on something that may be being planned anyway. The group I set up has almost 46,000 members across 100 countries. We learn from each...
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