Covid Inquiry Module 3: Core Participant status

Long Covid Support welcomes the inclusion of the Long Covid Groups (Long Covid Kids, Long Covid Physio, Long Covid SOS, Long Covid Support) in Module 3 of the C19 Inquiry. It is imperative that the post-acute sequelae of Covid19 are central to reflections on the pandemic response in order to better prepare for future outbreaks.

It is also important that lessons are swiftly learned and implemented in order that adequate
provision is made for the care, support and treatment of people whose lives have already been radically altered due to Long Covid. An increasing number of people of working age are being left unable to work at all or to their previous capacity as a result of their Long Covid. The fall in labour market participation is already having a measurable impact on the economy and is, in our opinion, not sustainable. Future modelling and policy decisions need to recognise that this is an ongoing problem.

Finally, it is important that immediate lessons are learned in terms of preventing more peoples lives being unnecessarily impacted. Long Covid Groups recently wrote an open letter to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care signed by over 20 organisations, calling for better ventilation and air filtration units and visible CO2 monitors in public spaces. We trust that appropriate mitigations will be incorporated into the Inquiry hearings, both to protect those attending, including the clinically vulnerable, and to model good practice.

Speaking on behalf of the Long Covid Groups, Anthony Metzer KC said:
“As Module 3 to the Inquiry opens today, we are glad to note Counsel to the Inquiry’s encouraging comments that Long Covid will not be overlooked during this Inquiry, as it has been throughout the pandemic. Disbelief, dismissal and denial characterised many Long Covid sufferers’ experience of the healthcare system during the pandemic, they struggled to receive a diagnosis, to access a care pathway and to receive treatment. Long Covid is an important central thread to the Inquiry’s understanding of the impact of the pandemic on healthcare systems, which we hope will be factored into the Inquiry’s scrutiny of all points under investigation in this module. We are particularly pleased to learn that the Inquiry will instruct a specific expert to consider the issue of diagnosis and treatment
of Long Covid within the Inquiry’s assessment of healthcare systems.”