Health services in Waltham Forest must be ready to support 'long Covid' sufferers next week - but face challenges in treating the little-understood condition.
National guidelines state the NHS must have support services for long Covid sufferers ready by next Monday (December 14).
Long Covid appears to emerge around 12 weeks after the illness itself, has a wide range of symptoms and affects both those who were hospitalised and those who were not.
Speaking to the council’s Health and Wellbeing board today (December 10), Waltham Forest NHS director Steve Peacock said support for sufferers is complicated by the fact they tend to be younger than those who normally need care.
He said the clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) for Waltham Forest, Newham and Tower Hamlets were choosing to bolster existing services rather than scramble to set up something new.
'We’re still not sure about the exact level of need'
He told the board: “This was not anticipated, we are still finding out about it and we’re still not sure about the exact level of need.
“A significant issue is that they are younger than the typical patients. A lot of these people will have been economically active until their illness and will need support to get back into work.
“Some (sufferers) are getting better, some are getting worse and most are still in treatment. Certainly there are people who caught Covid in March or April who are still not able to return to work.”
Mr Peacock noted the need to set up the service quickly meant the local NHS “will not have the all-singing, all-dancing model ready” and expects to continue developing in the first weeks.
Read more: 'Extremely concerning' spike in Waltham Forest Covid cases reported over weekend
An earlier service for long Covid, set up by Barts Health NHS Trust, struggled because it had only prepared to treat respiratory symptoms, based on the knowledge about Covid at that time.
The service found itself "overwhelmed" with patients with other needs, which he said “got very complex”, and has since reverted to being a specialist respiratory service.
To avoid a similar problem, the clinical commissioning groups plan to set up one “multi-speciality team” which can focus on referring patients to the specialists that they need.
Examples of symptoms seen by the Barts service, which he hastened to note was “not a scientific survey”, included breathlessness, coughing, fatigue and sleep issues, memory and concentration issues, loss of smell, gastro-intestinal problems and mental health issues.
Read more: East London hospitals confirm more than 70 Covid deaths in a week
Estimates for demand, for which he pointed out there was “very little evidence to go on", suggest 70 per cent of people seen by the Waltham Forest service will need no further care.
But these tentative projections estimate that, by mid-January, more than 100 of the borough’s residents may require at least some form of extra support for long Covid.
He told the board that, though demand and even “which direction the rate of infections is going” is still uncertain, it is not anticipated the service will be needed more than 18 months from now.
However, he warned that one “consequence of using existing services” is the need to ensure “demand from long Covid patients does not mean current users are disadvantaged”.
Another challenge faced by the NHS, he said, is how to reach members of the public who may not even be aware that they have a condition linked to their previous Covid illness.
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