Close to 100 NHS long covid clinics have sprung up. Erin Dean visits one and meets a multidisciplinary team tailoring support for this wide ranging and poorly understood condition
When 60 year old Shelley Curran caught covid-19 in autumn 2020, she waited to feel better. And waited. While her husband, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, recovered well, her symptoms dragged on.
“I just never really got better,” she says. “I stayed breathless and I was fatigued and then new symptoms came along to join the ones I already had. I can only do something for 10 to 15 minutes and then I have to stop to recover. People, even GPs, think you’re making it up.”
Curran, who lives in Wokingham, has had four appointments with the long covid assessment clinic at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust in Reading. She has had many symptoms including brain fog, digestive problems, nausea, pins and needles, feeling lightheaded, and shoulder and hip pain.
She is one of 2300 patient