Questions remain as to why long covid wasn't a political priority, writes Ondine Sherwood
In the early weeks and months of the covid-19 pandemic, it was left to patient advocates like us at Long Covid SOS to bring the issue of long term morbidity after a covid-19 infection to the notice of the UK government. Despite a series of letters to policy makers, some of which were published in The BMJ ,12 we and other groups struggled to get our voices heard. Notwithstanding the creation of NHS England’s long covid taskforce and ministerial roundtables on the subject, it became clear to us that policy making decisions throughout the pandemic were not being informed by the prevalence and risk of long covid. This was reinforced by the dearth of public messaging on long covid, resulting in widespread ignorance of the condition and missed opportunities to promote protective behaviour.
We are part of a group of long covid charities who are core participants in the UK covid inquiry. The Long Covid Group has established six framework questions that we would like module 2 of the inquiry to answer.3 We looked to Matt Hancock to provide clarity and answers to two of these questions: firstly, …