Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an estimate of the prevalence of long covid in children and young people in (a) England and (b) Lancashire.

The most recent data from the Winter COVID-19 Infection Study, a joint study carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the UK Health Security Agency, shows that, for the period 6 February 2024 to 7 March 2024, an estimated two million people, or 3.3% of the population, in private households in England and Scotland, self-reported experiencing long COVID symptoms more than four weeks after a COVID-19 infection. The following table shows a breakdown of this figure by age group:

While no estimate has been made specifically for Lancashire, the same dataset from the ONS estimated 270,939 people of all ages self-reporting experiencing long COVID symptoms in the North West of England region in that same time period.