a medical mystery
It seems so long ago, a distant bad memory of a bygone age, but the ongoing Covid inquiry has suddenly brought everything back with a bang: partygate; Barnard Castle; herd immunity; rampant misogyny; karaoke machines and suitcases of booze; an oft-stated pandemic contingency plan that never existed; corrupt procurement policies: an AWOL holidaying-PM more interested in completing his, as yet unpublished, history of Shakespeare; Ministers’ turf wars; disappearing WhatsApp messages; lamentable, non-existent leadership and Carrie Symonds’ government from the lavishly decorated No 10 apartment. Welcome back dear friend and oh, how I’ve missed you.
Anyway, we’ll save all that for another time as there is, potentially, a more serious repercussion that appears to have sneaked under the radar.
In early 2020, when Covid-19 was spreading rapidly across the globe, data optimistically suggested that it was a relatively short-lived infection. The World Health Organisation reported that mild cases lasted, on average, two weeks and more severe cases up to six. However, some patients soon attested to feeling unwell for far longer and the term Long Covid was eventually coined. There are no tests or biological markers for Long Covid and no universally agreed definition of its symptoms. The most commonly reported ones are fatigue and memory problems but mood-disorders, shortness of breath, loss of smell and/or taste, kidney damage, joint ache and skin conditions also feature.
It is now estimated that in the region of 65 million people worldwide are now suffering, in one form or another, from symptoms clearly associated with Long Covid. The consensus now is that it is a formal biological syndrome, albeit poorly understood, often post-viral and inflammatory. Our own Office for National Statistics estimates that two million people in the UK, or 3% of the population, have self-reported Long Covid symptoms, resulting in 110,000 individuals missing from work this year, with a subsequent #1.5bn hit to the economy in lost earnings.
Whilst it is obvious that Long Covid remains a threat, the good news is that for a majority of patients – 75% according to a recent study in the European Respiratory Journal – the symptoms completely disappear within twelve months. A further silver-lining is that, because it has affected such numbers, it will spur continued medical research into such syndromes. In fact, clinical trials are currently under way for symptom-specific drug treatments, such as anticoagulants for abnormal clotting, as well as various antiviral remedies. Sadly, the fallout from our woefully-inadequate government’s response looks set to continue well into the future.
