About 6,500 people in South Gloucestershire are likely suffering from long Covid, according to local health bosses.
While sufferers report a wide range of symptoms, the most common include fatigue, brain fog and breathlessness. Experts estimate 1.8 million people in England have long Covid, 12,000 of them in Bristol, and the true number could be even higher.
Details of the local scale of the problem were revealed on June 8 at South Gloucestershire Council’s health scrutiny committee. Alex Layard, programme manager at Healthier Together, told councillors that lots of support has been put in place for those suffering from long Covid. She added some groups of people are more likely to suffer from the syndrome.
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She said: “It’s very significant and it seems to be growing all the time. We would estimate that 6,500 people in South Gloucestershire are likely to have symptoms of long Covid. Two thirds of people say their daily activities have been affected, so they might not be able to work, look after their children, or do the exercise they used to do.
“We’re learning more all the time, and the risk factors seem to be that it’s people aged 35 to 49, more common in women than in men, and more common in people living in deprived areas. Also your job seems to make a difference: if you work in teaching or health and social care, there do seem to be more people in those populations who have long Covid. But long Covid can affect anyone.”
According to data from the Office for National Statistics, roughly around 2.4% of the UK population suffers from long Covid, which is described as a ‘syndrome’ rather than a disease, Ms Layard said, due to the huge range of symptoms. Anybody who thinks they might be experiencing symptoms of long Covid should contact their GP for referral.
South Gloucestershire Council’s public health team said the case numbers, hospital admissions and deaths for Covid-19 remain low in the area. Although the case numbers are increasingly less likely to be accurate, since the government stopped providing free tests and the number of people reporting their test results has massively dropped.
Rob Hayward, consultant in public health, said: “We’re now charting our way from pandemic to endemic. So in other words we’re learning to live with Covid as another infectious disease which will be with us from this point on. As the impacts are better managed it will become like many other viruses in how we manage this on an annual basis, akin to flu for example.”
