From the rollout of vaccination to the reopening of pubs, this ongoing stage of the pandemic can be seen as a hope of returning to the normal. Even so, we should not ignore a group of peoples who are still struggling with COVID-19: as per the report, approx. 1.1 million people in the UK who have been suffering from long Covid recently.

Long Covid refers to the symptoms that people experience four weeks or more after getting coronavirus infection. It’s still important to consider that not everyone who experiences long Covid will have long-term chronic illness, but over 700,000 people said that these symptoms were affecting their day-to-day activities miserably, and they had it for about a year. The most common symptoms that have been faced by the peoples are fatigue, breathlessness and pain, but some of them have even reported other symptoms, including partial hearing loss and numbness. ONS in their reports have clarified that hundreds and thousands of people are experiencing these illnesses, with absolutely no idea on how to treat it, or when it will end.

Long Covid is a big issue in our society, particularly because of its effect on the frontline workers. Report suggests that most of the healthcare staff is struggling with the condition in which they can work only part time, or not at all; this is one issue that is more likely to hit teaching and other key professions in the next few days.

Long Covid will definitely play a bigger role in both public health messaging and planning. A group of cross-party MPs and Peers have urged Boris Johnson to publish that data on several people with long Covid regularly, so that it can help shape future government policy towards the pandemic. The vaccination campaign is likely to do wonders to reduce the number of hospitalizations, but long Covid will also require a focus on reducing the transmission, since most of those who are struggling with chronic symptoms had a mild form of the virus to begin with.

The scientists and politicians are focusing constantly on the short-term urgency of saving lives over the long-term impact on public health. But in order to reduce deaths, they should strive to protect people’s quality of life. Unless the government will not come up with a plan, much of the UK’s population will continue to suffer from these long-term health conditions as no one still understands or knows how to treat them. As the country started coming back on track to some normality, people suffering from long Covid cannot be forgotten.