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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released the latest estimates of the prevalence people with self-reported ‘long COVID’ using data from the UK COVID-19 Infection Survey.
Prof Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, The Open University, said:
“The latest monthly ONS release on self-reported long Covid, based on their Covid-19 Infection Survey (CIS), covers the four weeks up to 2 October. As in previous releases, the results are based on survey respondents’ answers to the question, “Would you describe yourself as having ‘long COVID’, that is, you are still experiencing symptoms more than 4 weeks after you first had COVID-19, that are not explained by something else?”. The respondents form a large representative sample of the population of the UK living in private houses. Though the ONS report subtitle does explicitly refer to ‘long Covid’, and that’s how these long-lasting symptoms are generally referred to, I should point out that the current NICE guideline doesn’t call it that, and distinguishes between ‘Ongoing symptomatic COVID-19’ (lasting 4 to 12 weeks after the start of the illness) and ‘Post-COVID-19 syndrome’ (lasting over 12 weeks, and not explained by anything else).
“The ONS findings don’t generally make happy reading. For this most recent four weeks, an estimated 1.2 million people in the country reported symptoms lasting at least four weeks. That’s roughly 1 in every 55 people in the community population (aged 2 and over). The number has gone up from an estimated 1.1 million people, about 1 in 60 of the population, for the previous four week period. The ONS report points out that this increase must have something to do with relatively high infection rates during August, some of which would have fed through into long-lasting symptoms during September. However, we can’t deduce that there must have been about 100,000 new cases due to those August infections, just by noticing that the total number went up by about 100,000 – because people do recover from long Covid, and without any new infections, the total number would have gone down. So the number of new cases due to August infections must be larger than 100,000.
“What’s perhaps important, though, is that the pattern of changes across different groups in the UK is varied. In particular, the estimated number of children aged 12 to 16 reporting symptoms lasting more than four weeks went up from 31,000 for the four weeks ending 5 September, to 49,000 for the four weeks ending 2 October. That’s a very hefty increase of almost 50%. There’s been a lot of concern recently about high rates of new infections in that age group, since they went back to school (in early September in England). But the increase in long Covid cases in that age group, in this latest ONS report, is driven by cases before the schools restarted (except in Scotland where the term starts earlier). That’s because one has to have symptoms lasting four or more weeks to be included at all, so anyone included in the total for the most recent four weeks must have initially been infected right at the start of September, or more likely back in August or before.
“I am very apprehensive about what the figures for the 12-16 age group will look like in next month’s ONS long Covid bulletin, or the one after that. The rate of having long Covid (lasting four or more weeks) for the 12-16 age group is lower than the average for all age groups, with about 1 in 80 affected compared to the average across all ages of 1 in 55. But that rate has gone up from about 1 in 110 in the previous report a month ago. In any case the numbers involved are still quite large across the country, and are very likely to increase as the huge increase in infections in that age group during September and October works through into cases of long Covid. People discussing the current very high infection rates in secondary school age children sometimes say that they won’t be particularly important for the children involved, who are very unlikely to get seriously ill during their initial infection. But, judging by this ONS bulletin, quite a large number of those infected children may well go on to get long Covid, with unwelcome consequences for their well-being and education.
“The number of people (of all ages) reporting symptoms going on for a year or more has also risen compared to the previous report, from 405,000 to 426,000. Of those, an estimated 97,000 people have their day-to-day activity limited a lot by their condition. Long Covid is producing a very considerable level of disability in the UK.”
Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK: 4 November 2021
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:
www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
Declared interests
Prof Kevin McConway: “I am a Trustee of the SMC and a member of its Advisory Committee. I am also a member of the Public Data Advisory Group, which provides expert advice to the Cabinet Office on aspects of public understanding of data during the pandemic. My quote above is in my capacity as an independent professional statistician.”
None others received.