From the start of the pandemic, UK healthcare workers have been risking their lives and health caring for Covid patients without adequate protection. A significant number are now disabled following preventable occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2.
Almost one in five doctors (18%) with long covid who responded to a survey said that they were no longer able to work, and fewer than one in three (31%) were working full time, compared with more than half (57%) before the onset of their covid illness.
Nearly half (49%) of the 603 respondents said that they had lost income as a result of long covid. The survey was conducted by the BMA in partnership with the support group Long Covid Doctors for Action during December 2022 and January 2023.1
Just over half of respondents (54%) acquired covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, and 77% of these thought that they contracted it in the workplace. Only a small minority …