This week in Parliament, we debated the human impact of the COVID pandemic. Unfortunately, time was limited and many MPs wished to contribute. To accommodate everyone, speech times were cut at the last minute—first to three minutes, then to just two. This left many of us scrambling to shorten our remarks.

The video clip shows the speech I delivered under those constraints, while the text below is the full version I had originally intended to give. A recording of the full debate is here.

The Growing Impact of Long COVID.
Earlier this year we held a day of reflection across the UK, to mark five years since the start of the pandemic. It was, rightly, a moment to remember those we lost, and pay tribute to the incredible sacrifices that were made as we attempted to control the spread of the virus. However, we need to be wary of treating COVID as an historic event, something that we fought and eventually overcame, as this fails to capture the very real impact that it continues to have on many lives, throughout the UK.

Covid has not disappeared – just last summer, 443 people in Scotland were hospitalised with COVID, in the space of a week. And, possibly more worryingly, the landmark EAVE II Long Covid sub-study found that long COVID is now “common in Scotland, with a similar prevalence to conditions such as stroke, COPD or atrial fibrillation.”

Throughout the UK, the ONS has estimated that anywhere between 2-5% of the population have been or continue to be impacted by long COVID. Many of us will know somebody who felt fatigued for months after they caught the virus, but the wide range of possible, often hard to define, symptoms makes accurately diagnosing and treating long COVID a persistent challenge.

Feeling tired is one of the most reported symptoms, but it is often difficult to fully appreciate what this means, or feels like, without first-hand experience. Additionally, in the current political environment, where disability benefit claimants face increasing levels of scrutiny, I worry that certain negative tropes have started to spread which falsely portray long COVID as a mild or imaginary illness.

This could not be further from the case. The people who now find themselves unable to work or take care of their children, play football or go for a run, lived normal lives before they contracted this virus. They are not to blame for their exposure to COVID, or for the way their body reacted over the short and the long term. Long COVID is not an invention or conspiracy they have invented in order to “work the system.”

I don’t doubt that the scepticism which exists arises in part from the fact that most of us, at some point over the last 5 years, caught COVID. I can therefore understand why some, who bounced back with relative ease, might ignore or downplay other’s complaints around long-term, unshakeable symptoms. If everybody was lucky enough to be an MP – hearing from an incredible variety of voices from all manner of backgrounds, classes and communities – then I’m sure this attitude would quickly be dispelled; however, since this is not the case, I hope I can share a story from one of my constituents, Sophie, which starkly portrays the reality of living with long COVID.

Sophie enjoyed a full and active life, before the pandemic. She used to run to her office in the mornings, where she oversaw a small, dedicated team of designers. Now, she relies on a wheelchair to get around and is largely housebound. In her own words, “I am desperate to get back to my career and live again,” but doctors have been unable to help her.

Sophie is just one of a small, but growing number of constituents who write in to me with stories which highlight the seemingly irreversible impact that a COVID infection has had on their lives. With no proven treatments or a cure in sight, we can’t afford to treat COVID as old news – we need to keep talking about it.

I don’t believe that we should have to turn this into an economic argument in order for people to take long COVID more seriously. But various studies have shown that we not only lost billions in productivity to long COVID in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, but could lose a further £4.2billion by 2030 as a result of the long-term impact on our annual health care bills.

The best way to protect people from long COVID, and lessen the impact on our over-stretched NHS, is to reduce exposure and maintain a high rate of vaccination in communities which may be more susceptible to the long-term effects. But it increasingly feels like reinfection is being normalised.

As we continue to develop new models which will help us predict who is most at risk, and drive more accurate diagnosis, it is vital that we also offer the critical support that people like Sophie need. Whether this be through dedicated community hubs, many of which have been shutdown over the last couple of years, or individualised treatment plans developed by GPs referring patients to specialists, it is essential that we do not ignore this “invisible” condition.

So long as treatment options remain limited, and new patients continue to join the thousands already grappling with long COVID on a daily basis, we need to do three things: invest in new trials and research; empathise with people who’ve had their lives radically transformed by a COVID infection, and recognise that while the threat posed by COVID may have diminished, it still exists.