Long Covid — House of Commons, 2022-02-24
Topic: Health
Wendy Anne Chamberlain (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): We were told this week by the Prime Minister that the worst of covid was over and that we are moving from responding to covid as a crisis to it being something we will be living with for the long term. I think we all hope that the Government’s assessment is right and that after two long years of sacrifice, the worst is over This Adjournment debate, granted before last week’s recess, is also timely, because missing from the Prime Minister’s statement on Monday was something very important: how we deal with long covid. In fact, the Prime Minister did not comment on long covid at all. He talked about omicron being a less severe variant, and he said that covid should now be treated like the flu, but that overlooks the fact that the debilitating symptoms of long covid are not impacted by the severity of someone’s initial covid symptoms. Someone can have very mild covid symptoms initially, but be left with an endless illness stopping them from carrying out the most basic activities. That is one of the reasons why my party wants everyone to continue to have access to free testing—the fight against covid is not over just because we want to appease Back Benchers It is not really possible to describe long covid, but doctors now think that it is caused by somebody having an ongoing immune response to covid, long after the virus has left their body. What that looks like differs from person to person. There are 150 possible symptoms, with each person having a unique combination. The most commonly reported symptom is fatigue, then shortness of breath, loss of smell, difficulty concentrating and aching muscles. Symptoms can also include vertigo, fever, vomiting and diarrhoea to name just a few Long covid is also relapsing-remitting, which means that symptoms can come and go with little warning. In short, it is complicated, but what we do know is that it is affecting a vast amount of people. According to the Office for National Statistics, in the four weeks before 2 January, 1.3 million people across the UK had it. Considering that the spread of omicron did not peak until 30 December, the actual number of people suffering today is likely to be higher Tackling long covid is a challenge that we must take on, as much as tackling covid itself. When I applied for this debate, I caused a little confusion for some: "Why does a Scottish MP want to talk about a health condition when the care of her constituents is under the remit of the Scottish Government?" In some ways, they are right. It would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to the hard work of my friend the Member of the Scottish Parliament for Edinburgh West, who has been leading the way on getting health and social care support for long covid sufferers in Scotland. I know that his calls for proper care pathways, specialist clinics and support from trained district nurses will hugely benefit my constituents and others Treatment is only half the battle, however. The focus of this debate is how long covid affects someone’s ability to work and what support they need as a result. If we are now living with covid, we are also living with long covid. We have learned a lot about the disease in the past two years. There was little understanding for people who caught covid in the early days, and no understanding that their symptoms could last, but they have lasted. For that first cohort of sufferers, they have lasted for nearly two years. At first, it might have been understandable to think that they just needed to wait it out for their health to return to normal, but it would be completely disingenuous to say that now. Their symptoms are the reality of their daily life I have already mentioned that more than 150 symptoms are associated with long covid. The medical profession is still just starting to grapple with it and most people do not understand it much at all. Sadly, that lack of understanding is causing a stigma, as it often does, which is all too well known by sufferers of other diseases such as ME. Like long covid, fatigue is a common symptom of ME that also comes and goes When preparing for this debate, I spoke to representatives from Action for ME who have extensive experience with the problems facing those who describe fatigue as their primary symptom. They told me that people with ME face a significant stigma and face being told that their illness does not exist or that they should learn to just push through. They also told me that the same narrative and the same problems are being reported for the hundreds of thousands of people who have severe fatigue as a result of long covid. Indeed, Action for ME has had to close its helpline and waiting list because such a surge of people have contacted it. I cannot believe that that is unrelated to long covid Thousands of people are left suffering from an illness that may well make it hard for them to work, but their colleagues and employers do not necessarily believe that there is anything wrong with them. How can they explain an absence or ask for support in the face of being told that they are fabricating their debilitating symptoms? A better definition, guidance for employers and a Government-led campaign to boost awareness and understanding would go a long way towards changing attitudes to long covid The problem is exacerbated for people who do not have a formal diagnosis of long covid to fall back on. The Government’s working definition of long covid is a condition where symptoms cannot be diagnosed as being from anything else but the after-effect of a covid infection, but not all sufferers of long covid have had a positive covid test result. For the past 18 months, covid tests have become a part of daily life for most of us, but those who got covid in the first months of the pandemic were ill without ever being tested because the tests simply did not exist. That is a huge problem in a system where support—from employers or the Department for Work and Pensions—requires proof There is a future problem too that I have already referred to and that perhaps the Government would like to pre-empt. On Monday, the Prime Minister announced that free testing will end in just five weeks’ time, which means that more people will have covid, and might then have long covid, without a formal diagnosis. It would be a small but vital change to ensure that the diagnosis does not rely on someone having a positive test result on their NHS record.