My friend Ondine Sherwood, who has died from lung cancer aged 65, was one of the earliest campaigners for the recognition of Long Covid. Having failed to recover fully from Covid-19 in March 2020, she discovered that others were suffering similarly and GPs did not seem to know how to diagnose them. Ondine rapidly became the main spokesperson for the patient-created term “Long Covid”. She founded the group Long Covid SOS that June and secured charitable status and trustees.
Ondine lobbied politicians, doctors and civil servants for recognition of the illness. She stressed that the narrative of Covid being mild and flu-like unless the patient was vulnerable was not true.
