UK frontline doctors, like the rest of our NHS colleagues, stepped up to provide medical care to patients with Covid-19 from the start of the pandemic, long before any available Covid vaccines. Most were not furloughed nor able to stay home, but continued to provide healthcare, at considerable risk to themselves.
Now, like tens of thousands of other healthcare workers, we have a chronic illness and disability – long Covid – as a result of infection acquired in the workplace. It now appears that workers who risked their lives to provide essential medical care are facing not only chronic illness and organ damage, but also potentially financial destitution. It is morally indefensible that healthcare workers in this position are now being abandoned.
Long Covid is a debilitating, chronic physical illness affecting multiple organs, occurring in individuals after infection with Sars-CoV-2. It manifests with a myriad of potential complications, including damage to the heart, lungs or brain; disorders of the nervous system; blood clots; impaired memory; and disabling levels of fatigue. The number of people living with long Covid in the UK is now estimated at approximately 2 million.