Long Covid Awareness Day 2025

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Saturday 15th March 2025 is Long Covid Awareness Day.

There are countless threads with ill children on Mumsnet. These are frequently due to airborne infections. If you have a child who hasn't been the same since COVID infection(s) please check out the excellent resources at the Long Covid Kids charity website. Our children's immunologist says COVID is every season. There have been several waves every year since 2020. The average person can easily have had two or three infections each year.

Unfortunately our children have Long Covid and so do I. Our presentation also meets diagnosis of COVID induced ME which a subset of Long Covid patients develop.

Many children have PANS triggered by COVID.

Charities including PANS PANDAS UK, POTS UK, Long Covid Support, Long Covid SOS, There for ME have provided invaluable support.

The NHS has been closing the Long Covid clinics which were not focused on diagnosis, treatment and research but were unfortunately usually pretty mixed and often poor with an emphasis on psychology.

COVID is a multi system vascular illness causing harm throughout the whole body. There are upwards of 400,000 research papers worldwide.
The initial concept that is is a short lived respiratory virus is a misleading advert.
3 million people are affected in the UK according to the GP survey.
Some Long Covid sufferers have developed severe ME and are bedbound and spending their days lying near death in the darkness unable to tolerate movement. Others have had cardiac damage, stroke, early onset dementia.

We need:
Diagnosis
Research funding
Treatment
Access to antivirals in the case of reinfection

Clean air public health measures such as ventilation, HEPA air filtration
Masking in healthcare

Please consider:

• looking up Long Covid resources
• signing the charity petitions
• writing to your local MP
• asking your child's nursery or school or your workplace to support clean air public health measures

As well as small acts of kindness such as

• opening windows at every opportunity
• wearing a mask at healthcare appointments

https://www.longcovidkids.org/post/children-with-longcovid-and-me-disabled-discharged

The Governments response has been to stop the direct funding for LC clinics, only 40 odd out of 120 remain, and half of them are due to close shortly.

I was a very active gran. Racing around our field with a grandchild in the wheelbarrow was so much fun. A mild dose of Covid in January 2021 before the vaccine(I actually had it twice but very mild) has left me with terrible fatigue. We're on holiday at the moment. It took about 36 hours to recover from the journey here. A 2000 step walk yesterday - but felt so ill at dinner last night, I literally couldn't lift my fork to my mouth after the 1st couple bites of fish. I honestly never thought Covid could have had such a lasting effect on me. I'm on mumsnet a lot now because I'm not as physically active as before!

The Long Covid online support group was helpful only in asmuch as it was comforting to know I'm not alone in this - though I wish I was the only one!