Long Covid clinic helps hundreds in Staffordshire

It has been five years since the first cases of coronavirus were discovered in China. But today hundreds of people in the Midlands are still struggling with the long-term effects of infection.

Fatigue, joint pain, tinnitus and round-the-clock headaches are among the long Covid symptoms suffered by Diana Hughes and Diane Foster.

I visited her at an NHS clinic in Stone, Staffordshire.

Both women are bright and engaging, but also very honest about the impact of long Covid on their lives.

Ms. Hughes told me that if she has a busy day, she will often be completely drained for the next two days. Sometimes she can completely forget what she is talking about in the middle of a conversation.

And they both have to face people who don’t understand what they’re going through.

People say they had Covid and got well, implying that it was somehow their fault that they didn’t do the same.

Ms Foster said she bites her tongue when confronted with such people. “How can you tell people you have no quality of life?” she asked.

Both women are now clients of the Midlands Partnership NHS Trust’s long-standing Covid service.

There are over 500 other patients like her in Staffordshire alone. The service offers a variety of different ways to help people, from online group chats to exercise classes to help them get back into work.

Trish Denison works at the clinic as a lead occupational therapist. She admits that people want a miracle cure, a way to feel normal again.

Unfortunately, medical science hasn’t figured this out.

So the clinic offers something else. The first step, she said, is getting people to work on managing the impact of Long Covid. They treat the symptoms and not the symptoms they treat.

Patients are taught to accept that their lives have changed but that it is still possible to continue living.

It may take a while for patients to find the service. Ms. Hughes was lucky in many ways, she says. She worked in a GP practice and when it became clear that she was not recovering from her Covid infection, the GP referred her to the clinic.

However, Ms. Foster had a much more difficult journey to find help. She spent over two years trying to convince anyone she had a problem and felt “fobbed off” by her doctors.

When she finally called the service, she was met with open ears and someone who believed what she was saying.

She told me she burst into tears.

Accessing the clinic and its services is now easier as the team has decided to allow self-referral.

This means patients can contact us directly and do not need a GP to direct them.

Those responsible found that some GPs were failing those who had long been ill with Covid.

Katie Evans, from Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, told me that some patients had difficulty being heard by their GP and that was one of the reasons for the change.

Both women I spoke to praised the help they received. Ms. Foster showed me the app she now uses to track her overall health, which she said is crucial for planning ahead.

Ms Hughes said the service had helped her to be more self-sufficient in the face of often debilitating health problems.

The latest statistics indicate that almost two million people in this country are affected by Long Covid.

And while some find services like this, others may not be so lucky.

In fact, the NHS stopped publishing information about patients using these services earlier this year.

With NHS funding tight, some services are being merged or closed altogether.

Five years after the first coronavirus infections, long-term Covid patients feel too many have moved on as they – and hundreds more in Staffordshire – find the help they need.