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 patients the clinic—which is part of the Berkshire Long Covid Integrated Service run by the acute and local community trust—has seen to provide an assessment and management plan. It is one of a national network of services announced by NHS England in December 2020 to support those struggling with the condition (see box 1).1
Box 1
### Defining long covid
Some 1.9 million people in the UK—almost 3% of the population—were estimated to have long covid this March, according to self-reported data analysed by the Office for National Statistics.2
One in five of those affected said their ability to undertake daily activities had been “limited a lot” by symptoms continuing for more than four weeks.
These symptoms are wide ranging and often fluctuating, according to joint guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), Royal … RETURN TO TEXT
Related Keywords
United Kingdom , Northumberland , Northumbria , Ukraine , Berkshire , United Kingdom General , Wokingham , Oxfordshire , Northern Ireland , Craigavon , Scotland , Shelley Curran , Deepak Ravindran , Susannah Thompson , Anthony Collins , Melissa Heightman , Harriet Wilkinson , Erin Dean , Hannah Malyon , Melissa Hampton , National Institute For Health , Berkshire Long Covid Integrated Service , University College London Hospitals , Royal College , Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network , Foundation Trust In Reading , Office For National Statistics , While The World Health Organization , Royal Berkshire , National Statistics , National Institute , Care Excellence , Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines , Covid Recovery , June Monday , World Health Organization , Northumbria Healthcare , Living With ,
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.