Office of National Statistics: Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK: Updates

"Main points

• At 2 May 2021, an estimated 1.0 million people living in private households in the UK (1.6%) were experiencing self-reported long COVID (symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were not explained by something else).
  
  
• The estimates presented in this analysis relate to self-reported long COVID, as experienced by study participants who responded to a representative survey, rather than clinically diagnosed ongoing symptomatic COVID-19 or post-COVID-19 syndrome in the full population.
  
  
• Of people with self-reported long COVID, 869,000 first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, and 376,000 first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least one year previously.
  
  
• Self-reported long COVID symptoms were adversely affecting the day-to-day activities of 650,000 people, with 192,000 of these individuals reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been limited a lot.
  
  
• Fatigue was the most common symptom reported as part of individuals' experience of long COVID (547,000 people), followed by shortness of breath (405,000), muscle ache (313,000), and difficulty concentrating (285,000).
  
  
• As a proportion of the UK population, prevalence of self-reported long COVID was greatest in people aged 35 to 69 years, females, those living in the most deprived areas, those working in health or social care, and those with another activity-limiting health condition or disability; prevalence was lowest in people of Asian ethnic background.
  
  
• The raised prevalence of self-reported long COVID among health and social care workers compared with those in other sectors was largely explained by other (non-employment) socio-demographic characteristics and the risk of initial infection."
  

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...gcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/4june2021

 

I am still waiting for them to start asking people if they are experiencing PEM. They are tracking "low mood/not enjoying anything", but not PEM.

Does anyone know if there are plans to include this? I thought I read that they were going to start tracking this, but perhaps I was mistaken or that it wasn't ONS.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1400874909774094338

 

2 Expert reactions / SMC London

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...ing-covid-19-infection-in-the-uk-4-june-2021/

 

What a sad disaster this for the affected patients and their families. It looks like SARS2 is more likely to cause long lasting problems than many other viruses known to cause long lasting problems.

 

Interesting that that list does not include paresthesiae. We know of at least one case who reported them. Was that the sole case?

 

Many people have PEM. Why is this not being looked at? My own life has been devastated by long covid. I know there are many others - a huge number according to Patient Led - with PEM, and it's pretty insulting that this is not being reported generally.

 

Additional comment:
I have ME/CFS (although was doing really well), so at first I didn't know whether others with long covid were also experiencing PEM and thought maybe I was a special case due to my long-term ME/CFS. But when I saw the patient-led survey data PEM was near the top of their chart. They are simply one of the only people asking about this, it seems. I'm glad they did. It's time others do the same.

 

1st July update

1.Main points

• 
  An estimated 962,000 people living in private households in the UK (1.5% of the population) were experiencing self-reported "long COVID" (symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were not explained by something else), as of 6 June 2021; this is down slightly from 1.021 million (1.6%) at 2 May 2021.
  
  
• The estimates presented in this analysis relate to self-reported long COVID, as experienced by study participants who responded to a representative survey, rather than clinically diagnosed ongoing symptomatic COVID-19 or post-COVID-19 syndrome in the full population.
  
  
• Of people with self-reported long COVID, 856,000 (89.0%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, and 385,000 (40.0%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least one year previously.
  
  
• Symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of 634,000 people (65.9% of those with self-reported long COVID), with 178,000 (18.5%) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been "limited a lot".
  
  
• Fatigue was the most common symptom reported as part of individuals' experience of long COVID (535,000 people), followed by shortness of breath (397,000), muscle ache (309,000), and difficulty concentrating (295,000).
  
  
• As a proportion of the UK population, prevalence of self-reported long COVID was greatest in people aged 35 to 69 years, females, people living in the most deprived areas, those working in health or social care, and those with another activity-limiting health condition or disability.
  

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...gcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/1july2021

 

(I have the same comment about lack of PEM/PESE surveillance as in the last update!)
Pretty fed up with the lack of tracking of this symptom in the UK.

 

Coronavirus and the social impacts of ‘long COVID’ on people’s lives in Great Britain: 7 April to 13 June 2021

1.Main points

• Over the period 7 April to 13 June 2021, 6.2% of adults said they may have experienced long COVID since the start of the pandemic; this includes 3.6% who said they had experienced long COVID, and 2.6% who said they were unsure if they had experienced long COVID; a further 10.1% reported they had at some point had a positive test for or believed they'd had coronavirus (COVID-19) but had not experienced long COVID.
  
  
• Almost 6 in 10 (57%) of those who may have experienced long COVID reported this had negatively affected their general well-being; around 4 in 10 (39%) reported it had negatively affected their ability to exercise and 3 in 10 (30%) reported it had negatively affected their work.
  
  
• Of those who may have experienced long COVID, personal well-being levels across all four personal well-being indicators were lower compared with those who reported they'd not had COVID-19 (in any form); anxiety (4.6 for long COVID, 3.8 for not had COVID-19), life satisfaction (6.4 for long COVID, 7.1 for not had COVID-19), feeling that the things done in life were worthwhile (6.9 for long COVID, 7.4 for not had COVID-19) and happiness (6.5 for long COVID, 7.1 for not had COVID-19).
  
  
• Of those who may have experienced long COVID, 3 in 10 (30%) reported experiencing moderate to severe depressive symptoms in the last 2 weeks compared with 16% of those who had not had COVID-19; a quarter (25%) were likely to have some form of anxiety compared with 15% of those who had not had COVID.
  
  
• Nearly 1 in 2 (44%) of working adults who may have experienced long COVID reported that their work had been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, compared with around 1 in 3 (36%) among working adults who had not had COVID-19.
  
  
• Of those who may have experienced long COVID, almost a quarter (22%) reported their household finances had been affected by the pandemic compared with 13% of those who had not had COVID-19.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...peopleslivesingreatbritain/7aprilto13june2021

 

Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK: 5 August 2021

"
1.Main points

• 
  An estimated 945,000 people living in private households in the UK (1.46% of the population) were experiencing self-reported "long COVID" (symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were not explained by something else), at 4 July 2021; this is down slightly from 962,000 (1.49%) at 6 June 2021.
  
  
• The estimates presented in this analysis relate to self-reported long COVID, as experienced by study participants who responded to a representative survey, rather than clinically diagnosed ongoing symptomatic COVID-19 or post-COVID-19 syndrome in the full population.
  
  
• Of people with self-reported long COVID, 835,000 (88.4%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, and 380,000 (40.2%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least one year previously.
  
  
• Symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of 611,000 people (64.7% of those with self-reported long COVID), with 182,000 (19.3%) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been "limited a lot".
  
  
• Fatigue was the most common symptom reported as part of individuals' experience of long COVID (528,000 people), followed by shortness of breath (388,000), muscle ache (296,000), and loss of smell (285,000).
  
  
• As a proportion of the UK population, prevalence of self-reported long COVID was greatest in people aged 35 to 69 years, females, people living in the most deprived areas, those working in health or social care, and those with another activity-limiting health condition or disability."

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...oronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/5august2021

 

Merged thread - SMC reaction to the ONS statistics

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...g-covid-19-infection-in-the-uk-5-august-2021/

 

What's next? Exxon's CEO will butt in with his "expertise" on climate change? Andrew Wakefield and Richard Horton on vaccine safety? Wait that last one is half-believable.

Imagine that the SMC was allegedly created with the exact purpose of countering this kind of corruption of science, in the process discrediting public health and medicine all at once. Imagine that, like a firefighting department staffed exclusively by arsonists. And somehow they got firefighting squad of the year, because they're just that good with fire.

 

3 moved posts

Just 'reported' on BBC News; incidence of Long covid not as high as previously thought, 1.6%.........
I can't find anything about the source of this.

 

Even if it drops to 0.5% given the number of infections it's still huge ....

 

New Office for National Statistics numbers were commented on here: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...-19-in-the-uk-26-april-2020-to-1-august-2021/

 

Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK: 4 November 2021

Main points

• An estimated 1.2 million people living in private households in the UK (1.9% of the population) were experiencing self-reported long COVID (symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were not explained by something else) as of 2 October 2021; this is up from 1.1 million (1.7%) as of 5 September 2021, reflecting sustained increased COVID-19 infection rates in August 2021.
  
  
• The estimates presented in this analysis relate to self-reported long COVID, as experienced by study participants who responded to a representative survey, rather than clinically diagnosed ongoing symptomatic COVID-19 or post-COVID-19 syndrome in the full population.
  
  
• Of people with self-reported long COVID, 240,000 (20%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 less than 12 weeks previously, up from 154,000 (14%) last month; 849,000 people (71%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, and 426,000 (35%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least one year previously.
  
  
• The proportion of people with self-reported long COVID who reported that it reduced their ability to carry out daily activities remained stable compared with previous months; symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of 780,000 people (65% of those with self-reported long COVID), with 233,000 (19%) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been "limited a lot".
  
  
• Fatigue continued to be the most common symptom reported as part of individuals' experience of long COVID (55% of those with self-reported long COVID), followed by shortness of breath (39%), loss of smell (33%), and difficulty concentrating (30%).
  
  
• As a proportion of the UK population, prevalence of self-reported long COVID remained greatest in people aged 35 to 69 years, females, people living in more deprived areas, those working in health or social care, and those with another activity-limiting health condition or disability; compared with the previous month, prevalence of self-reported long COVID was notably higher among people aged 12 to 16 years or 17 to 24 years, with the latter now comparable to people aged 35 to 69 years.
  

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...onaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/4november2021

 

Interesting that they keep saying 'fatigue' when on the graph it says 'weakness or tiredness'.

 

Though we can not be certain of the numbers either before or after, it is looking likely that the number of people with symptoms compatible with an ME/CFS diagnosis in the UK has more than doubled in the last year and a half.

Given with Covid 19 the incidence of Long Covid is not related to severity of the original infection and that vaccination may not reduce the risk of subsequent Long Covid in those subsequently infected and given the ongoing high level of infections in the UK, it is possible that we will see a trebling of those with symptoms compatible with ME/CFS by the end of this year.

Assuming there were some 250,000 people with ME at the start of 2020, is it likely that this figure will reach 1,000,000 before the end of 2022? Is this likely to be replicated world wide, or will countries that are not relying on a herd immunity strategy fare better?