Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to support people with long covid; and what steps he is taking to increase awareness of the impacts of long covid.

Across England, services within the National Health Service are available to support people with post-COVID syndrome, often described as long COVID. These services offer physical, cognitive and psychological assessment, and, where appropriate, refer patients onto existing services for treatment and rehabilitation.

NHS England has recently completed a long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) stocktake, aimed to provide a national overview of service delivery in commissioning these services. It included assessing access, activity and outcomes. The findings confirmed significant variation in care delivery across England and a lack of comprehensive activity data.

To support clinical leadership in this area, NHS England has worked in partnership with the British Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine to develop a new Clinical Post-COVID Society to facilitate the ongoing sharing of best practice to support people affected by long COVID. More information about the society is available at the following link:

https://www.clinicalpcs.org.uk.

Information on long COVID is widely available from the NHS and the Government in a variety of formats. Detailed information for people of all ages and background on symptoms and the healthcare support that is available for long COVID remains available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/post-covid-syndrome-long-covid/

Over the last five years, the Government, through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the Medical Research Council, has invested over £57 million in long COVID research, with almost £40 million of this through two specific research calls on long COVID. The NIHR specifically has invested £42.7 million towards research for long COVID. The projects funded aim to improve our understanding of the diagnosis and underlying mechanisms of the disease, and the effectiveness of both pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies and interventions, as well as to evaluate clinical care. Further information on the research into long COVID commissioned through the NIHR is available at the following link:

https://www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/what-we-do/covid-19/long-COVID