A record two million people in the UK are estimated to be suffering from long Covid, new figures suggest.
Of the two million, 1.4 million said they first had Covid-19, or suspected they had the virus, at least 12 weeks previously, while 826,000 first had the virus at least a year earlier.
A further 376,000 said they first had Covid-19 at least two years previously.
The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), are based on self-reported long Covid from a representative sample of people in private households in the four weeks to May 1 2022.
Long Covid is estimated to be adversely affecting the day-to-day activities of 1.4 million people – around seven in 10 of those with self-reported long Covid – with 398,000 saying their ability to undertake day-to-day activities has been “limited a lot”, the ONS found.
Fatigue continues to be the most common symptom (experienced by 55% of those with self-reported long Covid), followed by shortness of breath (32%), a cough (23%) and muscle ache (23%).
Of the two million people with self-reported long Covid, 619,000 – nearly a third – first had the virus, or suspected they had it, during the Omicron period.
The first Omicron wave began in the UK in December 2021 and was followed in March 2022 by another surge of infections driven by the Omicron BA.2 variant.
In contrast, 593,000 people with self-reported long Covid said they first had Covid-19 in the early period of the pandemic, before Alpha became the main variant in late 2020.
