Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on (a) the number of people living with long COVID and (b) the (i) severity and (ii) duration of their symptoms: and what assessment he has made of research required to help improve (A) care and (B) support.

The most recent data from the Winter COVID-19 Infection Study, a joint study carried out by the Office for National Statistics and the UK Health Security Agency, shows that, for the period 8 February 2024 to 6 March 2024, an estimated 1,140,000 people, or 1.9% of the population, in private households in England and Scotland reported experiencing long COVID-19 symptoms more than twelve weeks after a COVID-19 infection.

Of these, an estimated 839,000 people reported that day-to-day activity had been limited, of which an estimated 251,000 reported that day-to-day activity had been limited a lot.

Between 2019/20 and 2023/24, through the National Institute for Health and Care Research and the Medical Research Council, we have invested over £57 million on research into long COVID, with almost £40 million of this through two specific research calls on long COVID. The funded projects 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 the effectiveness of clinical care.

This includes funded clinical trials to test and compare different treatments such as antihistamines, anticoagulants, and anti-inflammatory medicines. We continue to fund new studies regularly. A list of trials currently recruiting participants is available via the NIHR Be Part of Research website, at the following link:

https://bepartofresearch.nihr.ac.uk/results/search-results?query=Long%20COVID&location=