Only 29% of UK Covid hospital patients recover within a year

Paramedics lower a patient from an ambulance outside the Royal London hospital in London as the Omicron variant takes hold. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

Fewer than one in three people who have been hospitalised with Covid-19 have fully recovered a year after they succumbed to infection.

That is the shock finding of a survey into the impact of long Covid in the UK. The team of scientists and doctors at Leicester University also found that women had poorer recovery rates than men after hospitalisation, while obesity was also likely to hinder a person’s prospects of health improvements.