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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Danny Altmann

Vaccines are no match for long Covid. Treating it is science’s next great challenge

A health worker administers the first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 jab to a child under the age of 11
‘LongCovidKids.org reports a constant stream of new members, many developing long Covid after two, three or four bouts of reinfection.’ Photograph: Dinendra Haria/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock

Whatever your standpoint on whether the pandemic is over, or what “living with the virus” should mean, it is clear some manifestation of Covid-19 will be with us for some time to come. Not least for the estimated 1.7 million people in the UK living with long Covid.

And lest any who made a full and rapid recovery from infection still wonder whether long Covid might be a self-reported creation of the indolent, this is a now a large, well-documented, convergent cluster of clear physiological symptoms, and it is common to every part of the globe affected by Covid-19. Many sufferers of my acquaintance were keen cyclists, runners, skiers and dancers, but are now disabled and deprived of their former passions, while some are unable to resume their former professions. Doctors and scientists the world over now consider this a recognised part of the Sars-CoV-2 symptom profile.

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