We can also use this source to estimate the current threat of a COVID 19 infection leading to a case of Long Covid. The above report includes weekly estimates of COVID-19 incidence (peaking at around 1 in 200 people per week in early December), and a separate source surveys people to ask them if they have Long Covid and, if so, how long they have had it and how severe it is.[3]
Using the numbers of people who said, in February 2024, that they had had Long Covid for between 4 and 11 weeks, and overlaying these on prevalence a few months earlier, we can roughly estimate that the risk of a case of COVID-19 leading to a form of Long Covid affecting daily activities ‘a lot’ was between 0.1% and 0.2% during the UK’s 2023/24 winter. Including all people affected either ‘a little’ or ‘a lot’ the risk is around 0.5%, or 1 in 200 people. 4 to 11 weeks represents relatively short-duration illness, and we would expect a material proportion of these people to make a full recovery.
The net effect is that the total number of people experiencing Long Covid is no longer increasing. In the UK it has remained at around 2 million since 2022. Similar data in the US shows roughly flat prevalence over the same period.[4] Many of these people have long-term conditions, showing no signs of improvement in a period of over three years. However, increasingly this appears to be a cohort of people impacted in 2020-21, and not a (significantly) growing pool of people.