Many report symptoms lasting two years or longer and about 1.5m say disease affects day-to-day activities

About 2 million people in England and Scotland say they are experiencing long Covid, figures reveal, with many reporting their symptoms have lasted two years or longer.

The findings were released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and cover the period from November 2023 to March 2024, revealing of those who reported having long Covid, about 1.5 million people – about three-quarters– felt their day-to-day activities were affected, while 381,000 people – about a fifth – said their ability to undertake such activities had been “limited a lot”.

While the long-term risk from a current infection is 10 times less than it was in 2020-21, a lot of people are still suffering after getting Covid early in the pandemic

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Long Covid is one of the most controversial topics remaining about the pandemic. Depending on who you ask, it is either a real and current threat to the health of the globe, or a relatively minor issue that we should pay little attention to in the future. It is hard to weigh in on the topic without passionate advocates taking issue with the things that you say, which is true of quite a lot of the conversations we have had over the course of the pandemic.

A recent study from Queensland has injected further discord into this already complicated space. The press release about the study says that, in a large observational study, people who had tested positive for Covid-19 when the Omicron variant was spreading were no more likely to report ongoing symptoms or serious problems in their daily life than either people who tested negative or those who tested positive for influenza. This follows similar previous work by the same team showing almost identical results. According to Dr John Gerrard, one of the authors of the paper and Queensland’s chief health officer, the findings call into question the entire conceptualisation of long Covid, arguing that it may be “time to stop using terms like ‘long Covid’” .

From children behind on milestones to less active older people, broader effects are being felt four years after the initial outbreak

In March 2020, the pandemic closed in like a fog, ushering in a strange new vocabulary, alarming statistics and the fear of illness and death. In the days before the first national lockdown was ordered, the government’s chief scientific adviser suggested that a “good outcome” would be keeping UK deaths below 20,000, a number that sounded improbably awful at the time, but which has been dwarfed by the 233,791 deaths recorded as of December 2023.

The direct effects of the Covid-19 virus have been profound and continue to be felt, including by those with long Covid. But four years on, the UK is also reeling from the broader health impacts of the pandemic. Babies and children appear to have suffered developmental setbacks due to lengthy periods of isolation. Access to healthcare continues to be affected. Older people, who needed protecting most from Covid, were also uniquely vulnerable to the effects of physical inactivity. For some individuals, the pandemic prompted a rethink of priorities and provided new opportunities that paved the way for a healthier life.

People with excessive flexibility 30% more likely to say they had not fully recovered from Covid, research finds

People with excessively flexible joints may be at heightened risk of long Covid and persistent fatigue , research suggests.

Hypermobility is where some or all of a person’s joints have an unusually large range of movement due to differences in the structure of their connective tissues that support, protect and give structure to organs, joints and other tissues.

Queensland research’s lead author says thinking longer-term Covid symptoms are unique can create hypervigilance and impede recovery

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Long Covid may be no different from other post-viral syndromes such as those experienced after flu, according to new research from Queensland Health.

The lead author of the study, the state’s chief health officer Dr John Gerrard, said it was “time to stop using terms like ‘long Covid’” because they imply there is something unique about the longer-term symptoms associated with the virus, and in some cases create hypervigilance for them which can impede recovery.

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Researchers found that deficits equivalent to six IQ points were detectable a year or more after infection

People experiencing long Covid have measurable memory and cognitive deficits equivalent to a difference of about six IQ points, a study suggests.

The study, which assessed more than 140,000 people in summer 2022, revealed that Covid-19 may have an impact on cognitive and memory abilities that lasts a year or more after infection. People with unresolved symptoms that had persisted for more than 12 weeks had more significant deficits in performance on tasks involving memory, reasoning and executive function. Scientist said this showed that “brain fog” had a quantifiable impact.

If barrier controlling substances entering and exiting brain is off balance, it can drive changes in neural function

From forgetfulness to difficulties concentrating, many people who have long Covid experience “brain fog”. Now researchers say the symptom could be down to the blood-brain barrier becoming leaky.

The barrier controls which substances or materials enter and exit the brain. “It’s all about regulating a balance of material in blood compared to brain,” said Prof Matthew Campbell, co-author of the research at Trinity College Dublin.

Enlarge / A woman with Long COVID who is completely bedridden, requiring the use of a wheelchair to move between rooms of her home. (credit: Getty | Rhiannon Adam )

Over four years after SARS-CoV-2's debut, researchers still struggle to understand long COVID, including the ostensibly simple question of how many people have it. Estimates for its prevalence vary widely, based on different study methods and definitions of the condition. Now, for the first time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has attempted to estimate its prevalence among adults in each US state and territory. The results again show a wide range of prevalence estimates while revealing the states that were hardest hit as well as those that seem relatively spared.

Overall, the CDC found that seven states in the South, West, and Midwest had the highest prevalence of long COVID in the country, between 8.9 percent and 10.6 percent: Alabama, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wyoming, and, the state with the highest prevalence of 10.6 percent, West Virginia. The results are published today in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report .

On the other end of the spectrum, New England states, Washington, and Oregon had lower prevalence rates, between 3.7 percent and 5.3 percent. The lowest rate was seen in the US Virgin Islands with 1.9 percent. Washington, DC, and Guam had ranges between 1.9 percent and 3.6 percent.

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Enlarge / A long COVID patient sits with her daughter in her wheelchair while receiving a saline infusion at her Maryland home on Friday, May 27, 2022. (credit: Getty | The Washington Post )

Tens of millions of people worldwide are thought to have developed long-term symptoms and conditions in the wake of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. But this sometimes-debilitating phenomenon, often called long COVID, remains a puzzle to researchers. What causes it? Who gets it? And, perhaps, the most maddening one: What is it?

Long COVID patients have reported a wide spectrum of more than 200 symptoms. Some are common, like loss of smell, while others are rarer, like tremors. Some patients have familiar constellations of symptoms, others seem to have idiosyncratic assortments.

Researchers hypothesize that long COVID may simply be an umbrella term for a collection of variable—and potentially overlapping—post-COVID conditions that may have different causes. Those causes might include autoimmunity, immune system dysregulation, organ injury, viral persistence, and intestinal microbiome imbalances (dysbiosis).

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